NEWS
[ HEADLINERS ] Did Pres. Cory Aquino know Robredo in 1986?
By the CRANE MONITOR Staff

A young lawyer was introduced to a table, full of Caramoanons who had come home from the US for the Peñafrancia fiesta, as the incoming judge of Caramoan. Without being asked the lawyer went on to say he is going to be the Municipal Trial Court judge because he was recommended by a congressman and he is a relative of another politician. When asked if he had been formally appointed, the lawyer whom the hosts did not even know said not yet but he was sure his appointment would be signed. A lady from Malacañang who was also seated in the same table shook her head, obviously annoyed by a presumptuous lawyer who knew nobody in the table yet carelessly spoke of things he should have kept to himself.

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For a long time now Caramoan does not have a resident judge. But the town needs one who knows what to say at the right time, right place and right occasion.

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AFP Chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon has vowed that the NPA would be totally crushed by 2010. By that time Esperon would no longer be in service. If his prediction does not happen who will give the alibi?

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Muslims all over the world were enraged when Pope Benedict XVI quoted in a recent speech at the University of Regensburg a medieval Byzantine Emperor who said that some of the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, were “evil and inhuman”. Muslims have been attacking Christian Churches since then and resorting to other forms of violence. With all these violent outbursts what His Holiness has quoted seems to be not far from the truth.

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Again Senator Richard Gordon and Juan Ponce Enrile had a fi eld day hacking at a government official summoned to a Senate investigation. Defiant PCGG Chairman Camilo Sabio, by the way, was arrested because he refused to attend the Senate investigation citing Executive Order No. 1 creating the PCGG which exempts the Commission from Legislative proceedings. Senate was investigating reports of anomalies in sequestered corporations notably the Philcomsat. Every person being summoned to Senate hearings inevitably develops a defiant attitude because of the propensity of senators to embarrass anyone invited to the supposed august hall. Chamber of grandstanders, you know.

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One fiction being floated around these days is that Mayor Jesse Robredo was appointed Program Director of BRBDP in 1986 supposedly because President Cory Aquino already knew him at the time. That is a nasty fantasy. Cory only came to know Robredo long after he had become mayor. Robredo was just a common SMB employee in Manila then but because while studying in Manila he lived with the family of Congressman Luis R. Villafuerte in Palanan, Makati he was preferred by his benefactor who enjoyed much clout under Aquino’s Revolutionary Government. When Villafuerte saw the opportunity to put his protégée at the BRBDP helm he did not let the chance slip and had the obscure SMB employee appointed but not by President Aquino but by Doy Laurel who took over the functions of Cesar Virata as Prime Minister. That precipitated Villafuerte’s break-up with the late Senator Edmundo Cea who wanted his own nephew also to be BRBDP chieftain. In 1988, Villafuerte drafted Robredo for Naga City mayor and managed and spent for his campaign against Atty. Ramon Roco, brother of former Congressman Cho Roco. If one cannot be grateful, at least one must not twist facts.