By: Alex P. Vidal “I have always been against the gangster as hero.” – Ruby Dee IT seems nobody is interested anymore to identify the real killers of Western Visayas’ alleged drug lord Melvin “Boyet” Odicta Sr. alyas “Dragon” and his wife, Merriam. No one from among his living lawyers (some of them have “disappeared”
August 30, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “Saying goodbye doesn’t mean anything. It’s the time we spent together that matters, not how we left it.” – Trey Parker I DEVELOPED a friendship with Dr. Carmencita “Menchie” Robles, 61, when I was writing for the News Express from 1988 until 1992. Aside from being one of the original sentinels
August 29, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal NO matter how the Iloilo City Legal Office package, justify, and camouflage the “electioneering” case recently filed against three City Hall officials Danny Tan, Vincent de la Cruz, and Eireen Manikan, Ilonggos will still sneer at it as nothing but a political vendetta. Ilonggos weren’t born yesterday to believe hook, line,
August 28, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.” – Hyman Rickover THE good news is the Kasadyahan Festival will no longer be a second class citizen. If plans do not miscarry, it will have its own identity and territorial waters, no longer as a
August 27, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.” – Mahatma Gandhi NOT all those arrested by the police and paraded for a mug shot should be ashamed for the rest of their life. A person can be arrested for a murder he committed
August 26, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “If you can’t see past my name, you can’t see me.” ― DaShanne Stokes IF you aren’t authorized, you can’t solemnize. Iloilo City Legal Officer Edgardo Gil’s basis for calling as “fake” the marriages solemnized by “ex” Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC) Branch 5 Judge Ofelia M.D. Artuz was the
August 23, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “I think that the enormous emphasis on violence and sex, and in particular violent sex, may not make rapists of us all, but it predisposes us to accept a kind of world in which these things happen.” –Alexander Walker I KNOW of at least four Iloilo mayors accused of committing rape
August 21, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “Anybody can become angry–that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way–that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” – ARISTOTLE ANY lawyer from Iloilo aspiring to
August 20, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” – David Foster Wallace IN other mega corporate ventures in the country managed by one clan that involves a public interest, we seldom heard–or none, at all–of an intra-family feud that threatens to
August 17, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we’re tired of hearing promises that we know they’ll never keep.” – Ray Davies A FORMER town and provincial official, a good friend of mine, who was lucky to
August 16, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.” – Nikita Khrushchev ONLY a bridge can solve the problems of those regularly crossing the Iloilo Strait to Guimaras vice versa. A bridge won’t automatically kill the maritime industry in the area, but people
August 15, 2019
By: Alex P. Vidal “The thing about tourism is that the reality of a place is quite different from the mythology of it.” – Martin Parr WE are worried for tourism in Iloilo and Guimaras in particular, and in Western Visayas in general, following the travel advisory issued by the United Kingdom urging its citizens
August 12, 2019