It’s not yet over ’til the fat lady sings

By: Alex P. Vidal

“True, it’s not over till it’s over. And even when it’s over, it just begins again.” ― Kate McGahan

THE final hymn wasn’t played yet.

But it looks like MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power) will close the year 2019 with a major edge over its rival, Panay Electric Company (PECO), with its recent victory in the Supreme Court that halted the implementation of the ruling of the Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court (RTC) declaring two sections of MORE Power’s franchise law void and unconstitutional.

Ilonggos saw MORE Power and PECO spending 2019 in bloody legal skirmishes.

PECO, for sure, still has several aces up its sleeves and isn’t in the mood yet of throwing in the white towel.

After this latest major setback in the SC, PECO is expected to go back to the drawing board and prepare for the next showdown with the MORE Power when they start the 2020 next month.

The more PECO is wounded, the more it is emboldened to assemble a larger army for a bigger battle.

After having seized the superior position, MORE Power won’t sleep on its victory; instead, it is expected to tighten up its grip in the pivotal SC en banc decision and sustain the juggernaut.

The suspense and thriller movie of the year the Ilonggo electric consumers have started watching in 2019 will have a more intense and complicated continuation in 2020.

 

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POLICE Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) Spokesperson, Lt. Colonel Joem Malong called as “fake news” the report that several school kids in Western Visayas were recently abducted by a group of men from Manila.

A “wrong information” is different from “fake news.”

Since the abduction story was false, it’s a wrong story or wrong information.

It can only be called as “fake news” if it was announced in the public in the form of a legitimate news item in the media: newspaper, TV, radio, Internet.

But if it came from unreliable and unverified sources and spread only in the coffee shops, barbershops, in casual conversations with no factual basis and not even a raw data, it’s a plain and simple “wrong information.”

Since the story about the abduction of school children was never processed as a news item (meaning it never met the basic news ingredients of who, what, why, when, and how) it could not be qualified to be in the category of legitimate news; therefore it shouldn’t be called “fake news.”

It may be called only as a “kotso-kotso” (gossip) or “himu-himu estorya” (fabricated story).

 

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The splendid performances of our athletes in the ongoing 30th Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) being hosted by the Philippines and the pomp and glorious display of excellence by the host country during the opening ceremonies is a different story.

We should be proud of it as Filipinos; we must proclaim it all over the world. No problem with that.

But the alleged corruption in a massive scale of the country’s sports officials and the accountability of Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano as head of the Philippine Asian Games Organizing Committee (Phisgoc) is another story.

We shouldn’t be too overwhelmed by the success of our athletes and the splendor of the opening programs and parades that we will become deaf, mute, and blind to the major concern: some P6 billion in taxpayers’ money should be accounted for–only when all the athletes have gone home to their respective countries and the games were over.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)