Did Dy absorb Mabilog?

By Alex P. Vidal

“Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home… it’s your responsibility to love it, or change it.”—Chuck Palahniuk

INSTEAD of arguing whether they engaged in vote-buying during the elections, some members of the Iloilo City Council should focus on more important issues with direct impact on the lives of their constituents.

While vote-buying is a serious offense by any candidate seeking an elective public office, it can always take a backseat if there are more pressing matters that need to be tackled or prioritized.

Like the problem on health and sanitation especially that four tropical cyclones are expected to hit the country in October; the ear-piercing flood control tumult; the ever-controversial real property tax brouhaha; assistance for victims of storm Opong, among other urgent concerns.

The issue on vote-buying is also important and hot, and should be debated and investigated during the election season, but not when Ilonggos are expecting their aldermen to pass worthy resolutions that would redound to their benefit.

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Did former Iloilo City mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog lose his job as Special Adviser to House Speaker Martin Romualdez now that the latter has resigned as speaker and was replaced by Isabela Rep. Faustino “Bojie” Dy III?

Mabilog was appointed Special Adviser to House Speaker Martin Romualdez on May 1, 2025, or four months ago.

His appointment was officially confirmed through a memorandum signed by House Secretary General Reginald Velasco.

Since Romualdez remained as Leyte first district representative, did his office “absorb” the former city mayor in his staff?

Since Mabilog is not a Leyte resident and can’t be given a clerical position intended only, of course, for Romualdez’s province mates, it is possible his portfolio as special adviser for the former House speaker was also terminated.

Unless Dy will retain Mabilog, which is a far-fetched possibility, the former city mayor, who hid in the United States for seven years to escape the wrath and death threat from former Philippine President and now ICC detainee Rodrigo Duterte, will have to find another office where his expertise is needed while his Ilonggo constituents are hoping and waiting he will be qualified to run again in the next elections.

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PEOPLE who misuse the name of God dishonor His name and denigrate His holiness.

Like Eddie Villanueva, a party-list representative and former defeated presidential candidate, who reportedly used and even allegedly misused the name of God to threaten those who linked his son, Sen. Joel Villanueva, to flood control project anomalies.

The reason God will condemn us is because misusing his name is a very great sin.

It is a direct attack on his honor and glory, and anyone who makes such an attack deserves to be condemned.

When people break the third or any other commandment, they are guilty before God, and ultimately they will be judged for their sins.

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What God forbids is not the use of his name, then, but its misuse. To be specific, we are not to use it in a vain or empty way.

The specific misuse that God has in mind is speaking about him carelessly, thoughtlessly, or even flippantly, as if he didn’t matter or really didn’t exist at all.

God’s name has deep spiritual significance. So to treat it like something worthless is profanity in the truest sense of the word: It is to treat something holy and sacred as common and secular.

Even If he invoked the name of God, in the eyes of many Filipinos, Eddie Villanueva, or Bro. Eddie, condoned the alleged corruption of his son, who allegedly received some P160 million in kickbacks from the P600 million flood control projects.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Editor)