Butch Bagabuyo “It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing.” – Galatians IV 18 “JOHN Milton got up at four o’clock every morning to work on Paradise Lost. William Cullen Bryant rewrote Thanatopsis ninety-five times. Noah Webster worked thirty-six years to produce the first edition of his dictionary. Many business executives put in ten or twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week -- not always because they have to, but because they are enthusiastic about their work.” These facts were written by Dr. Roy B. Zuck in his Speaker’s Quote Book, to drive home, I believe, his point that zeal is the complementing action word for love, faith and hope. But on the downside, zeal is fanatism at its worst -- it has made terrorists out of young, innocent and gullible members of the unwashed and the unschooled as well as intellectuals. Thanks but no thanks to the division in the Court of Appeals-Mindanao station that is presently handling the case involving transition Mayor Oscar Moreno, our city has irreparably lost, at the very least, five days of our proud history as a city and people. Only because the division in the CA, for reasons unwelcome to Kagay-anons, delayed their ruling on the kind of a restraining order prayed for and what they issued. “Justice delayed is justice denied” used to be a worn-out cliché but it found a refreshing relevance and importance in the pending case now hounding our City of Golden Friendship. Here’s my take: For the very first time in the annals of our proud history as a city and people, a sitting mayor was recently dismissed by the Ombudsman. And luckily for our city, the Ombudsman also awakened the nation when she decided to suspend the   sitting mayor of Makati City. Not only that, our Supreme Court also came up with the ruling that the Court of Appeals has jurisdiction to try a decision of the Ombudsman in an administrative case involving the Mayor Binay of Makati. This being so, every Filipino expected all the members of our Court of Appeals in the country to have read the news and studied its relevance and importance. If only for these facts, the members of the division handling the pending case involving our city should recuse themselves, if they have not yet done so, not out of delicadeza but more on being outdated if not, blind and deaf to the prevailing state of facts in the city. In fact, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Misamis Oriental chapter owes it to the legal profession to demand pronto a swift, transparent and impartial investigation on the matter. What happened should never ever happen again. There ought to be a law that requires all courts of whatever level to call for a summary hearing within 24 hours upon receipt of a complaint/petition praying for a restraining order of whatever kind under pain of contempt in case of failure to conduct a hearing as well as to rule within the same 24 hours. Undoubtedly, a hearing is preferable than a ruling without it. This is so because old practicing litigation lawyers are opt to suspect with good reason that in the Court of Appeals, the ruling is based on the saying, “If the price is right.” As a long-time practicing litigation lawyer, I dare say, the present court practice is an open invitation to the culture of impunity now raging recklessly in our country amidst the nauseating mantra “Matuid na daan” or “Natuwad nga dalan.” Anyway, I’ve heard from impeccable sources that with the latest brouhaha involving transition and hambuguero Mayor Moreno and the clearly oldie and ailing Dongkoy, Team Rufus Harus is speedily sailing out in the clear and calm seas heading for a clean sweep if the May 9, 2016 local elections were held today. By the way, is there any truth to the latest spin that a general who is included in the lineup of the dismissed, transition and hambuguero Mayor Moreno is packing up and rushing out to report to Speaker Belmonte the impending mutiny and sinking of a hambuguero nga langaw nga nakatungtong sa likod sa kabaw? Que sera sera. While it is too early to celebrate, the sharks are feasting on the few remaining men, women and LGBTs who have rushed in jumping out of the clearly sinking ship of leadership if not, utter lack or absence of effective mayoral skills. Is it karma this early? Or hambuguero man gud? Choose your wild. Be that as it may, the mayoral race in our city has been effectively reduced to a one-on-one fight between Robust Rufus and oldie and sickly Dongkoy. Rufus harus! Tsada, di ba?
  • •
“To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.” – William Penn Early in my teens on Burgos Street where I was the only kid in town with a makeshift boxing ring, there were no fundamentalists in our city as well as in the entire country. And mind you, our community by the riverbank was composed mostly of the poor, the deprived, the oppressed matanseros/butchers, and a few Muslim traders from nearby Lanao provinces who freely co-mingled with all of us, Lumads and Christians. But that was long ago. Sadly, with the increasing number of peace-loving Muslims who were displaced from their own communities due to the debilitating greed by Imperial Manila, more and more of their young were disillusioned. Consequently, not a few of them became innocent victims of fundamentalism not out of love to wipe out what fundamentalists call as infidels but because of false beliefs that by doing so, they will attain heaven. “As I approve of the youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with the old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body but can never be so in mind.”  These are the assuring words of Cicero, which, to my uncomplicated mind, is imbided in our man, Davao Mayor Rodrigo “Super Digong” Duterte. Unless we, the teeming millions of the poor, the deprived and the oppressed, fall on our knees and pray in unison that God, in His infinite wisdom, anoint our man Duterte as the next President of our country, the independent Federal Republic of Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan-Tawi-Tawi shall be installed pronto on May 9, 2016 with Duterte as our first President. Duterte pa more!