Duterte in a coma? Joma issues fake news

President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte made his fifth visit to Cebu this year, this time to meet 300 mayors in Central, Eastern, and Western Visayas as he joined the Visayas Island Cluster Conference of the League of Municipalities in the Philippines (LMP) and since we didn’t check out this conference we can only expect that Duterte is now using his popularity to push for his federalism advocacy. If any, it is the political groups from the Visayas and Mindanao who have always believed in federalism, while most of the oppositors come from Metro Manila, funded by the Aquino Family who refuse to change the 1987 Constitution named after Cory Aquino.

It would have been nice if Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña met with Duterte to find solutions to his problems with the police, a problem that he never had during his previous terms as mayor. Of course, it goes without saying that Osmeña is no longer allied with the ruling political party since he did not support the candidacy of Duterte. But then this should not be a cause for alarm, except that Osmeña is warning citizens that it is the police doing the killings, without offering proof. Of course he is right in asking the police for forensic evidence in the case of SPO1 Balili, which the police still haven’t given him. So for as long as this has not been given to the mayor and the public, we cannot remain silent about this.

Finally after a long time of deliberating on its need, Cebu Province finally created an ordinance giving life to an Inter-Agency Council for Traffic (IACT) during its last session as authored by Provincial Board Member Edsel Galeos. The IACT supposedly synchronizes the enforcement of all traffic laws, ordinances and policies within Cebu Province. How this body will implement this ordinance with real teeth depends upon who will be handling this organization.

A case in point for instance is if the IACT will still allow Cebuanos to hold those slow funeral processions (mostly done on Sundays). In my view, funerals should already be motorized so that there will be very minor disruption in traffic along the municipalities of Cebu Province.

Perhaps a bigger issue is whether or not the IACT will still allow the use of tricycles along national roads, where they are supposedly banned. But it is a law that has never been implemented. So in my book this is a test case for the IACT whether or not they have the political will to bring about changes in traffic management so as to clear our streets of any obstructions. So in the meantime, let’s allow Cebu Province to implement its new traffic ordinance and see if they are successful. In short, I’m willing to give them a chance!

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I don’t know why his news surfaced last Monday that Duterte was in a coma. The news came from Communist Party of the Philippines head Jose Maria Sison. Of course, it wasn’t true but still many media personalities used it as if it was Bible truth. This only gives you an idea of how desperate certain people are against Duterte; they are willing to sell fake news just to bring him down. 

I really don’t know why the mainstream news organizations gave any news coming from Sison any importance especially that he is not here in the Philippines. This only proves that many newsmen in the mainstream media are still sympathetic to the cause of the CPP, which is not good for their respective publications.

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No, I didn’t forget that yesterday was the 35th anniversary of the assassination of the late senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. Since I became a columnist in The FREEMAN on August 5, 1987 and therefore I’m a 31-year veteran in journalism, I always write about the death of Ninoy and what I was doing on the day he was killed. But after the removal of the Marcoses who were replaced by President Cory Aquino and later her son, President PNoy Aquino, nothing much has improved in our country, which is why we are fighting for that dramatic shift from a unitary form of government and into a federal form of government.

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.

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