Now you see him,
now he's gone

Anti-climax of the year: The surfacing of Maguindanao Election Officer Lintang Bedol at the Commission on Elections office. For several days, suspense was rising over the claims of Comelec officials as to what would happen to their recalcitrant man if he is ever caught. Bedol, as we recall, showed up before, just to confess that he had lost the documents on the election returns in his territory, then disappeared, ignoring, or defying anguished calls from his bosses (or so they pretended to be) for him to come out and face the music.

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Then the police triumphantly came up with a one-eyed jack, that is a Bedol with one eye plastered because of a recent cataract operation. Which was as good an excuse as any to hide away in a hospital. But this could make matters worse, because if he could not even see where the election papers went with both eyes open, how much more with one of them covered? I said it was an anti-climax, because all the excitement over the "arrest" of Bedol just fizzled out after he told the Comelec board "not guilty" and they let him go. Just like that!

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Our senior citizens will exult over this news. The Supreme Court has rendered a decision that definitely declares the Senior Citizens Law fully legal, especially with regards to the purchase of medicines. A case was cited about a senior who complained that she had to travel to Manila to buy her maintenance medicines because the drugstores in her town would not honor her SC card. Now all drugstores must comply, because the highest court in the land has confirmed this.

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Complimentary to the report on the Supreme Court decision, there is also another one saying that the government is going to purchase P200 million worth of hypertension medicine Norvasc so it can sell it at a lower price to Filipino patients. It can do this now because the patent of Pfizer, the company producing it, expired on June 13. I know dozens of people who take this medicine regularly, and this will surely gladden them. What is being planned is to reduce the local price of Norvasc which is about P45 per 5 milligram tablet to something like what Thailand charges which is P25, or Pakistan which is even cheaper, at P12. That will surely be a relief in more ways than one.

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Meanwhile, speaking of medicines reminds us of the arrest of several medical doctors in the United Kingdom on suspicion that they were responsible for at least two bombing incidents that, thankfully, failed. One must congratulate the British police and detectives, they were able to trace the suspects in a very short time. And, would you believe, the suspected "Killing Docs" were found to be Iranian, Jordanian, Iraqi and even Indian. Thank God, none of them was Filipino. We've been shamed before the Italians, so, please, not with the British, too.

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Just a few months after their inauguration that was attended by no less than President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Teletech Bacolod already held another inauguration yesterday, this time for the expansion of their office site. The company is now occupying the entire second floor of the Robinsons building at Araneta Street, in front of the Bacolod airport. Business must indeed be very good for Teletech, and Bacolod shares their success, because they have given jobs to almost 2,000 people, among them our latest graduates. As its executive officer, Michael Sendall, who toured us around the new area, said, "It's a win-win situation for both."

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I noted with appreciation the set-up in the expansion area which is very colorful and systematically arranged giving it a lively atmosphere. We were shown the sleeping room, where workers rest, and the game room where they relax. A gym is also about to be opened. It was a very pleasant experience, indeed. The only sour note was the singing of the Philippine National Anthem which would have made its composer twist and turn in his grave because it sounded like a dirge. Had former President Ramos been there, he would have reprimanded the singers in his speech, as I have seen him do several times, even abroad.*

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