By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
No one would ever think this could happen in the White House — perhaps, the most secure place on earth — but the Associated Press reported that “a baggie of cocaine was found at a White House lobby” last July 2.
No fingerprints or DNA were lifted from it despite thorough FBI analysis. Surveillance footage failed to identify a suspect. So, the Secret Service investigation found no leads on the big question: Who brought the drugs into the building?
Hmmm… you know what Marcos loyalists are gonna say? Finding cocaine in Malacanang is never going to happen. In the first place, who’d dare to sniff around for that mind-warping trash?
NBI appointments
If NBI Director Medardo de Lemos keeps his extended position despite really ugly incidents that have brought shame to the agency, he should do right from now on.
Let’s reexamine, for example, how he dealt with the presidential appointments of Noel Cruz Bocaling and Romel Tuazon Papa as Directors IV of the NBI last April. While Papa, a 30-year career official, finally made Assistant Director for NBI’s Forensic Science & Management Service, Bocaling, it seems, was placed on floating status and given a small office with a tiny table the size used by a notary public situated on an Avenida sidewalk.
Now, two assistant director positions are occupied by low-ranking officials in acting capacities: Legal Service and Information Technology. Bocaling is not a lawyer and, therefore, not qualified to take the helm of Legal Service, but he is undoubtedly fit to head the directorate for IT.
But still, disregarding the abilities of Bocaling is not only a personal insult to him but also a slap in the face to President Marcos, who had appointed him. Should De Lemos continue to keep Bocaling in limbo, he has also completely ignored his immediate boss Justice Secretary Boying Remulla, who was behind the gracious extension to his term in the NBI.
Of watering weeds
The stage-performing drag queen, Pura Vega Luka, has apologized to the Catholic Church for offending people of the faith in his “Ama Namin” (Lord’s Prayer) song number. He admits that he has made a character of what he called the “Drag Jesus” as his persona when he performs dressed and made up like the popular statue image of the Christ.
He tried to justify his actions as a means of coming to terms with his Catholic faith while expressing his sense of “exclusion” on account of his gender identity.
But if Pura Luka Vega remains unrepentant of his actions and still refuses to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church, he better at least not be a hypocrite. I guess it would be reasonable to invite him to renounce his Faith and become an apostate.
There’s no point in staying. Don’t wait for excommunication.
And as Socrates B. Villegas, Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan, said in his reflection on the social depreciation as a result of the last administration’s extrajudicial killings in the misplaced justification of the war on drugs, the same goes for those who “water” the “weeds” in government.
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