This is one road accident that could be considered double tragedy.
A traffic enforcer of the City Transport and Traffic Management Office (CTTMO) was bumped dead by a vehicle that was reported to have counter-flowed at the Diversion Highway-San Rafael by-pass road.
We are saying that the accident is a double tragedy because the traffic enforcer was at the road to investigate a traffic accident. While doing some measuring to determine responsibility in the traffic mishap he was probing he was hit by an over-speeding Asian Utility Vehicle (AUV) that was speeding on counter-flow.
Ironically, the vehicle was driven by a Police Lieutenant who is in Davao City taking up further training.
Imagine a traffic enforcer’s life suddenly snapped by a reckless police official driver who may have gone out of the Police Training Center without permission! According to the center’s guidelines, police trainees can only go on furlough during weekends.
What a tragedy indeed.
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The editorial of this paper in its issue last Friday, December 13, disclosed an unfortunate incident in front of the venue of the United Nations-initiated negotiations on carbon reduction in the environment. The convention was attended by delegates from 196 nations. The negotiation conference was held last week in Madrid, Spain.
Members of the world-renown environmentalist group Greenpeace International were holding a rally and demanding for climate justice. The protesters were led by its international head Jennifer Morgan. Unfortunately, they were pushed by security officials to the venue’s car park where they were briefly held. Morgan who had been attending as observer in the UN negotiation meetings in the last 25 years was ejected from the hall and was locked out.
She called out the UN Secretary General to intervene to make sure that the citizens around the world can engage and have their voices heard in the negotiation process.
Now we can safely say that the so-called bastion of human rights concerns, the United Nations, is not totally in possession of moral authority to demand governments of its member countries to respect human rights. If it is, then the UN Human Rights Committee should have taken steps that the rights of Greenpeace members to stage a rally are protected.
But look what happened last week in Madrid, Spain while the Greenpeace members were staging a protest? Not only were the environment activists pushed out from the perimeter of the venue, the UN- hired security personnel also locked out the Greenpeace leader and all other activists as well.
What does that make of the UN Human Rights Committee’s call to leaders of other countries including our very own President Rodrigo Duterte to respect human rights when the institution making the call is not the epitome of the value it is proposing to be perpetuated?
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We really cannot understand why some officials and celebrities sidelining as rights activists are thinking that the Philippines is still part of the territory of the country they claim they are coming from.
Imagine a group of United States senators claiming to be members of that country’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee passing a resolution demanding the immediate release of detained Philippine senator Leila de Lima! The same resolution introduced by US lawmakers led by Sen. Ed Markey also wanted the government to stop the “harassment, arrest, unjustified judicial proceedings against Philippine media and journalists, in particular, the proceeding against Rappler and Maria Ressa.”
Wow! They must be paranoid about being agents of the country that professes to be policeman of the world.
