DOTC gives airport deal to Megawide/GMR

Finally, the P14.4 billion new airport terminal deal for the Mactan Cebu International Airport has been signed and approved by the Department of Transportation & Communications as the winning bidder, Megawide/GMR Consortium, remitted to the DOTC its P14.4 billion bid yesterday. Call it all's well that ends well. Of course, we don't have any idea whether the Supreme Court  would issue a temporary restraining order against the DOTC and the winning bidder as this is already in the Supreme Court. So literally the ball is in the Supreme Court.

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For most of Holy Week, we were treated to a live via Satellite tv drama happening in Jindo, South Korea where the 6,825 ton Sewol, a ferryboat bound for a holiday, hit something and sank with 300 passengers on board. Ship captain Lee Joon-Seok has since been arrested for criminal charges because he was not on the bridge when the ship began to sink. Another charge against the captain was that he did not declare abandon ship and reasoned out that the sea was freezing cold.

As of last count, some 108 passengers have died, 194 are still missing, while 174 passengers survived the sinking. Most of the passengers are high school students on their way to a holiday island. Meanwhile, Chonghaejin Marine that operates the Sewol has issued an apology on its website. Meanwhile, South Korean President Park Geun-hye bewailed the actions of the ship captain and its crew as akin to murder.

This incident reminds me of the recent sinking in the port of Cebu only last Aug.16, 2013 when the cargo ship M/V Sulpicio Express 7 collided with the M/V St. Thomas Aquinas where as of last count, a total of 55 passengers were confirmed dead. The major difference between South Korea and the Philippines is that in our country, shipping companies never apologize for any untoward incident and ship captains are never arrested for criminal neglect or responsibility for the deaths of their passengers. This is something for you folks to ponder.

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Last April 6th, Department of Interior & Local Government Secretary Manuel "Mar" Roxas went to the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club with his guests, one of them Filipino Golf Pro Rey Pagunsan, but he was told that the DILG Secretary had to pay P5,000 green fees for his guest. This apparently angered the DILG Secretary who threw around "P….tang Ina" curses to the Club's employees. Things got worse because he continued on to the first tee and when a course employee asked for his receipt, the DILG Secretary had none to show and he threw more curse words.

This incident made it to the Social Media circles, but not much in the mainstream media (but it was headlined in The Philippine Star last Wednesday) because of the Holy Week season. Of course as expected, the Wack Wack Golf & Country Club Board of Directors has to investigate this case whether Mr. Roxas has literally gone "Out of bounds." Of course in his defense, Mr. Roxas wrote a letter to the board saying that he did not use any "cuss" words nor badmouthed anyone. But then again, the whole incident has been out in the social networking sites.

Of course, irate members of this prestigious golf club aren't happy that one of its members literally went berserk. Last year, I too had an altercation with a drunken member of the Cebu Country Club who berated me for my being anti-PNoy in front of my friends. Being a good Christian, I literally showed him "my other cheek."

But my fellow members who witnessed the incident where the ones who insisted that such an affront should not be allowed to pass in order to teach that member lessons in decorum. I guess I was too kind, so I asked the board for a letter of an apology from the fellow which came out weeks later. That member would have been suspended if there was no letter. The question is will the Wack Wack board suspend the DILG Secretary for his outburst?

At this point we cannot be sure because the president of Wack Wack Golf & Country Club is Mr. Philip Ella Juico, a fellow writer in the Star who is a known supporter of Pres. Benigno Aquino, III. So the ball is really in the court of the Wack Wack board. But with that said, people in social media have already written a "finis" to the presidential bid of Sec. Mar Roxas because of this incident. As for me, Mr. Roxas literally shot his own presidential bid after super typhoon "Yolanda" struck, where we saw his video with Mayor Romualdez, where the DILG Secretary told him, "You are a Romualdez, and the president is an Aquino." He just placed politics above the needs of the people who suffered from the biggest typhoon that struck Mother Earth and that statement from a government official is unforgivable.

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