Decades ago, I always found time to play in sandlot basketball games. Exuberance of the youth! But, my real objective in joining the games was not to show that I had a pair of good shooting arms. While I was a respectable shooter from a distance which modern games would score three points, my intention was to go to the improvised basketball court because from there I could watch the only television set in our neighborhood receiving the programs of then Channels 3, 7 and 13. In those years, were no cable televisions nor internet platforms.
The marvel of modern technology is unimaginable. I do not anymore have to pretend joining sandlot basketball to see news features shown on our neighbor’s television. I can see what is happening throughout the world even in a small gadget called cellphone which I can carry anywhere. With quantum leap in digital communication, the world has so literally shrunk that I had the chance to observe two Negrenses.
The other day, I received, thru my cellphone, a copy of a press conference of Mayor Fritz Diaz of Siaton, Negros Oriental and a video footage of a Senate hearing investigating the peace and order situation in Negros Oriental. I realized that the clips are months old yet the images are remarkably crisp and the audio is very clear.
Sen. Ronald de la Rosa, the Senate committee chairman on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs, focused on the brutal killings, actually mass murders, which apparently targeted the late Gov. Roel Degamo. I am sure that the senators wanted more to formulate laws to prevent the recurrence of such breaches against peace and order than to find out who the murderers were. The language of the constitution “The Senate or the House of Representatives or any of its respective committees may conduct inquiries in aid of legislation xxx” is clear.
Resource persons were invited to the Senate hearing. They were high-profile personalities in the Negros Oriental socio-political scene among them Mayor Diaz. That he is the mayor of the late Governor’s home town, to me, justified his presence. The usual (and seemingly pointless) question and answer session proceeded with the mayor appearing confident. Then he declared something that hit me like a lightning bolt because it could probably open a proverbial Pandora’s box. He admitted having been gifted with a very expensive car, a Ferrari. I surmised that Mayor Diaz did not realize that his candid admission could be a seed of an anti-graft case. Receipt by a public official of Mayor Diaz’ position of such an expensive gift violates legal limits, after all.
I remembered that just few weeks earlier than the Senate hearing, when authorities were training their investigative scope on the Teves brothers, expelled Cong. Arnolfo “Arnie” and Pryde Henry, as alleged brains of the death of Gov. Degamo, the latter gave a blanket authority to the Justice secretary to look into their bank accounts. He wanted to show that he could not fund murders. Who knows that Pryde Henry’s money in the bank can buy him a Ferrari, yet his gesture of allowing investigators to look into it made him somewhat of a different character than Mayor Diaz.