Who knows more about Kerwin Espinosa?

Today is the proverbial “Ides of March” which we learned from the play “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare, when a “soothsayer” named Spurinna warned Caesar to ‘beware the Ides of March.” On this day, when Caesar arrived in the Senate in Rome, he told the soothsayer that the ides of March have come… but she answered him…”Aye, Caesar, but not gone!”

Later, Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Senate floor by his close friends notable among them Brutus. So what holds the Ides of March for our country? I can only hope that no untoward incidents would happen in our nation today.

Meanwhile, the big breaking news this week is about the unexpected dismissal of the cases filed by the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) against self-confessed drug dealer Kerwin Espinosa and Peter Lim. I really didn’t like to comment on this issue until I heard from no less than Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte. And when the President said his piece, he certainly did not disappoint us.

As pointed out by Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, the President warned the Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary saying, “Pag nakawala yan si Lim at Espinosa, siya ang ipapalit ko.” In response to this Presidential threat, Sec. Aguirre immediately formed a panel to look into the dismissal of Kerwin Espinosa and Peter Lim. I’m not at all surprised that Pres. Duterte was taken aback by this dismissal because Espinosa had admitted at a congressional hearing that he was a drug distributor: “Nag-amin na nga sa Congress. Why not admit it as evidence against him?”

Incidentally just a month ago, Ronda Vice-Mayor, Atty. John Ungab, the lawyer of Kerwin Espinosa, was shot and killed in broad daylight in his car with his wife in front of the Quimonda Building in Cebu City which houses the Regional and Municipal Trial Courts in Cebu. This murder is still being investigated as of this writing, but it somehow elicited a comment from an unlikely source, Chief Insp. Jovie Espenido, chief of police of Ozamiz City who neutralized the Parojinog gang. Espenido was quoted as saying that he was glad that Atty. Ungab was killed. The chief inspector probably knows more about the liaison between Kerwin and his departed lawyer.

With the dismissal of the cases of Kerwin Espinosa and Peter Lim (which Malacañang says it ain’t over yet), Chief Insp. Espenido gave this chilling reaction saying, “If he would be released, I would be free to hunt him down. His drug dealings have continued.” Espenido added that his information is 101 percent validated that Espinosa’s siblings have continued with his illegal activities. Before he was transferred to Ozamiz City, Espenido was Chief of Police of the town of Albuera, Leyte were Kerwin’s father Rolando Espinosa was the Mayor who was later killed inside his jail cell. 

I would like to exhort DOJ Sec. Aguirre to sit down with Chief Insp. Espenido and the DOJ panel that he just created in order to bring in more information and to resolve the issue as to why Espinosa and Lim were cleared by the DOJ. I know that a great majority of our people believed in what Pres. Duterte told them about Espinosa, plus we all heard him say during the Senate investigation that he was a drug dealer. So what the public would really like to know is…why were the two cleared last December and this information not made public until certain media personalities stumbled into this information. Abangan!

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I read with great interest that report showing that the Philippine Air Force (PAF) was able to acquire six Scan Eagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) from the United States Military worth $13.36 million under a Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. US Ambassador Sung Kim turned over the UAV’s to the PAF during a ceremony held at the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing Hangar at the Villamor Air Base. They are the first UAVs that the PAF has acquired. We are indeed modernizing the AFP!

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said that the acquisition of the UAVs gives the PAF a big boost in its air intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations. The Scan Eagle has an infrared camera with a range of 62 miles and a flight endurance of over 20 hours. I hope that our PAF soldiers would conduct numerous trainings especially on spotting armed terrorists on the prowl in the countryside, especially in deep jungles, where the infrared camera can be of good use.

I have been using my Mavic Pro drone for a good two months now and I know what a huge advantage it is for the military to literally have an eye in the sky. But a well-trained eye, using an infrared camera can easily spot a man carrying a rifle simply because of the body heat of humans, which more often is transferred to the weapon.

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