They're plotting by fives now

First the news screamed: Five destabilization plotters nabbed! The five were said to have been recruiting or convincing other soldiers to join them in their schemes against the government. Aha. They did not reckon with the alertness of military operatives. So they were caught and interrogated on their plans, all five of them, for overthrowing this administration. But yesterday, the news said again that one of the alleged destabilizers had to be dismissed because there was nothing they could pin on him. Later in the day, it was also reported that the cases against the rest were also weak. I guess they will have to look for another batch of plotters and destabilizers to keep those agents busy.

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But the bigger news of the day is the unkind cut from the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States who slammed our aviation industry and demoted it to Category 2, which, I understand is like saying they cannot trust us to carry their precious citizens because we are not complying with what we should, if we are to operate airlines. Promptly, the President sacked the head of the Air Transport Office, the poor fellow was then in Bacolod probably thinking he would be one of the VIPs at the ribbon-cutting for the new airport.

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The President must have felt the FAA downgrading was that serious. She also immediately assigned the Transportation and Communication Secretary himself to take over the fellow's job. As of late yesterday, I understood that there was no problem, they will pass a bill, they will go to Washington and talk to those unkind people and convince them to put us back in Category One. I only hope they don't scold or threaten them that we will get back at them if they don't listen, the way we did with the American Committee for Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools when the entity was being strict with our nurses after the June 2006 examination scam.

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The Filipina who was killed in the blast at the plush Kabul Serena Hotel in Afghanistan had been identified and found to be from Sagada, Mountain Province . A Physical Therapy graduate, she must have felt herself lucky to get a job abroad that paid $700 a month. Reports said she did not die at once, she was taken to a hospital where she expired much later. I hope she had been taken to a hospital with up-to-date facilities and highly competent staff. The fact that she did not die at once could mean that she might have been saved, you see. In the reports that came out only recently about the death of Princess Diana in Paris, there were speculations that she might have been saved if proper treatment had been done immediately. They also said that the time gap between the actual accident and the time treatment began made a difference.

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Such thoughts came to me after reading about the death of Zennia Aguilan in Kabul because I remembered an incident when I was in Cambodia with several Filipino journalists covering a presidential state visit. Shortly after our arrival, we heard from people we met at the Philippine embassy that an official of the U.S. Embassy was suffering from what was believed to be acute appendicitis and had to be airlifted to Thailand for an operation. We were surprised, because we could not believe that such a simple operation could not be done right there Phnom Penh , but apparently, that was a common practice there, especially for those who can afford to fly their patients out. I hope the Kabul hospitals are more modern.

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Yesterday we attended the inauguration of the new airport in Barangay Bagtic, Silay and were glad to be in the company of Ed Alunan, the guy who made it a point to be on the last flight to leave the old airport, and was also on the first flight landing on the new one. He reproached us for putting his photo on the front page, but sounded tickled pick when he said it. The program started quite late, but at least the rain fell only after the very early dinner was served. But I heard later that the wind was so strong that it blew off the tents and tablecloths set up in the parking area for the guests, and a lot of chinaware and glassware were broken.

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Well, isn't there a superstitious belief that you have to break something when you are starting or inaugurating something? I don't know if it's part of the belief but Jimmy Golez complained that a tree almost fell on them, too. Fortunately we were already inside, touring the premises by then. By the way, we timed our trip home from the new airport to the DAILY STAR office, and it had taken one hour and two minutes! How I shall miss the days when I could run to the airport 20 minutes before flight time. Now I'd have to grow wings to do it.*

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