I WAS in this court room waiting to be called out on a libel case filed by another journalist. Several cases were called out before mine, and there was this one case I won’t forget.
Lawyer: At the scene of the accident did you tell the police officer you never felt better in your life?
Farmer: Right.
Lawyer: How is it then that now you are claiming you were seriously injured when my client’s van hit your wagon?
Farmer: You see, when the police officer came, he saw my horse with a broken leg and shot him. Then he went to Bantay, my dog and saw it hardly breathing and bleeding and shot my dog also. So when he asked me how I felt, I thought, to save myself from being shot, I had to tell him I was feeling well.
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I remember of this story by a lawyer friend who got into car collision accident late one evening.
None was hurt but value of damage has got to be assessed and responsibility established. The drivers in the collision were a doctor and a lawyer.
The lawyer called for the police.
While waiting for the police to arrive, my lawyer friend, feeling cold in the night, offered the doctor a drink of brandy.
The doctor accepted the offer and returned the bottle to the lawyer that the latter just placed back in his car.
“Aren’t you taking a shot?,” the doctor asked. “Yes I will, after the police investigation.”
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Update on the race to Malacañang in 2022.
Inday Sarah is definitely running for president, says a journalist friend from Mindanao. He asked me to organize Sarah All Movement in Leyte, my home province.
“Inday Sarah is surely running,” my friend assured me, claiming that the Go-Digong team up is actually a product of fear by some Malacañang big shots who will be stripped of their powers in Malacañang when Sarah steps in.
Sarah is the continuity of what is good in President Duterte, my friend insisted.
Too bad, I told my friend, there is very little I can do in organizing for Inday Sarah as I can’t even return to my town, Tolosa, in Leyte because of the pandemic.
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And talking of Leyte and politics, the premier province of Region 8 is now starting to get hot for the 2022 elections.
Politics in the province is practically controlled by two families, the Petillas and the Romualdezes.
The Petillas control the province and the important town of Palo plus the congressional district in the south of the province and its center of commerce and trade, Baybay town.
On the other hand, the Romualdez family has control over the capital, Tacloban City and the first congressional district.
They also have one more seat in Congress owing to Tingog’s win in the last elections.
Petilla’s political control, however, appears more solid as even the hometown of the Romualdezes, also my hometown, Tolosa, the mayor is most loyal to the Petillas.
There is no reason to doubt the loyalty of this mayor to the Petillas.
It is common knowledge that development projects offered by the Romualdezes to the town were rejected to avoid doubt on the loyalty issue.
In the last four elections, the Romualdezes had failed to sit a mayor in their own hometown.