Developing stories

Our deepest condolence to tycoon Lucio Tan and his family and the Lucio Tan Group of Companies for the demise of Mrs. Lucia “Letty” Gonzalez-Tan who passed away on Monday, Aug. 31, 2020.

She “lost her battle to a lingering illness,” according to a family statement. She was 77.

Mrs. Tan leaves behind her husband, and children Michael and Angeline, Sharon and Edgard, John and Nancy, Cherry and Alfred, Tammy and Christine and her grandchildren.

As reported by GMA News, the Tan  children described Mrs. Tan as “the taipan’s warm, friendly and affable spouse . . . and a jolly and doting mother and grandmother.”

Her wake at Chapel 3 of Heritage Park Memorial Chapel in Taguig City which started Sept. 2 will be up to Sept. 7, at 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Interment will be on Sept. 8, at 11 a.m. also at Chapel 3 of Heritage Park.

*      *      *

So many developing events battle for our attention: the US presidential campaign, the killings of black humans, the letting go scot free of white killers – in the US of A. (Political campaigns are characteristically mudslinging exercises, but the American contenders and followers (guess who) are congenital liars and violators of provisions of the US constitution but are only questioned for doing so but not hailed to court.

Here at home there’s the frantic move to form a “revolutionary government” that oppositors consider foolhardy as there must be an EDSA 1 type revolution that will unseat the incumbent president and install another. The creators of such a revolutionary government do not realize that, as lawyer Romulo Macalintal declares, the present president, if that is the intent, cannot head such a RevGov, he will have to resign, the effect of which, as pursuant to the 1987 Constitution, the duly elected Vice President, Leni Robredo, automatically assumes and performs the functions and duties of the Office of the President.

On the other hand, Senator Panfilo Lacson’s desire is for Congress to pass a “Designated Survivor” bill that will guarantee the continuity and stability of operations in government in case the  president and the three officials in the line of constitutional succession are disabled or killed due to a terrorist attack. Heaven forbid that such an event will take place, but Senator Lacson says, “Just in case. . .”

Then there is the unpalatable story of Kapuso broadcaster Arnold Clavio’s being declared the father of former OFW Sarah Balabagan’s son. Sarah made this revelation only recently – 21 years after her son was born, in which case, an attorney said Clavio is not liable for child abuse charges since the prescriptive period is between 12 years and one day and 20 years. “If she was 17 when it happened and she filed, there was a crime, but she didn’t, so he gets away with it,” the lawyer said.

Sarah is reported to have made the revelation upon the insistence of some sectors, and even her present husband allowed her to make the revelation.

If such a prescriptive period applies in Clavio’s case, it behooves  my good friend, Henry Gozon, president and CEO of Channel 7, to rule on the propriety of an employee’s taking advantage of a 17-year-old when she was in the throes of her experience as being at death’s door for having killed her Arab employer for raping her. Clavio was one of the reporters covering Sarah’s case.

We wait with bated breath for how Clavio’s case is treated.

Other developing stories are on the Congressional Committee on Women and Gender Equality (chaired by Bukidnon Rep. Malou Acosta Alba) bills on the creation of a National Filipino Women’s Museum and “National Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Transphobia, and Other Phobias on Persons of Diverse  Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity or expression, or Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC).”

*      *      *

The COVID-19 pandemic still roams and roars quietly but fatally. I am heartened by the beauty of a poem written and posted on Facebook by my sister-in-law, Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, a nationally recognized poet  who lives in Iowa with my brother, Lemuel. I’m taking the liberty of printing her poem.

SUMMER RAIN

By Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas

The day after the longest day of the year:

Summer solstice. Starting today, we get

A minute less of daytime. Then it all

Starts over again. In Paleolithic times,

At prehistory’s crowning glory, Stonehenge,

Men calculated exactly the moment

The rising sun would send its rays between

Two precisely distanced rocks, the dawn of time.

Today we hear Trump absurdly declaring he alone

Decides we’re free to stop our self-isolation.

These times of distancing are

Deprived of the simplest affirmations:

The lips that smile, the pat on the shoulder…

We guess at what the eyes really mean,

Above the face masks that have turned us

Into burglars, or highwaymen in the Wild West,

Or hostages with mouths duct-taped

In our voluntary isolation; we’re sneak thieves

Of moments with the grandkids six-feet-away

And beyond the glass pane, strangers to ourselves.

The virus crowned our days with this abasement.

We wish the gust of rain sweeping past, overhead,

Would last just long enough to cleanse the humid

Petri dish in intra-species infection of its experiment

Gone wrong: a minute shorter in the day of humankind.

RT, Covid diary entry 6/22/20

*    *    *

Email: [email protected]