Mona Lisa y Rosa Mia

 

Taga-Bulans can’t help but sing Nat King Cole’s song every time they talk about our public hospital in Pawa.

 

    Almost always they chorus:

 

Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep. They just lie there, and they die there!

Are you warm? Are you real, Mona Lisa?

Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?

 

    Ironically, however, Bulan’s general hospital is far from being a “lovely work of art”, cold during the Christmas season and unbearably warm in summer.

 

    And if that is not enough to send chills down your spine, most of the emergency patients brought to its doorstep don’t get proper medical attention, they just lie there, and yes, they die there!

 

    Last year (December 3, 2007), for instance, a “not-so-discreet” love triangle ended in a bloody confrontation between a jealous lover and an Indian national inside Bulan’s One Concepcion lodging house, along the town’s business center. The Indian national was attacked inside the motel room while he and his 25-year old mistress were about to begin their sexual congress.

 

    The “jealous” lover reportedly barged into the room, armed with a knife, and brutally stabbed the Indian national several times before turning to the woman who was taking a bath. The woman frantically fled the motel naked, after she, too, was fatally wounded by the assailant. She negotiated the steep stairwell of the lodging house and collapsed at the side walk of de Castro St. (formerly Disky Boulevard), where she and her Indian lover were rushed to the Pantaleon Gotladera Memorial Hospital in Pawa.

 

    At the hospital, no physician was on duty. Only nurses were there to attend to the victims. There were not a single emergency facility in the “operating room” or even much-needed medicial supplies.

 

    The hapless Indian national expired without receiving any medical attention or anything to ease his trauma except for the medical staff’s checking the victim’s blood pressure.

 

    During police investigation, however, a suspicious “twist” of events attended the “love triangle” angle.

 

    According to initial police investigation reports, Ana Gipit (the supposed victim of the Indian national) confessed to police investigators SPO1 Edgar Calupit and SPO1 Maricel Gelilio that she (Gipit) was the one who stabbed Raji Want Singh for allegedly attempting to rape her inside the Concepcion Lodging House. Another report, however, claims that Singh was a sadist who derives sexual pleasure by wounding his partner Gipit who, in turn, grabbed the fan knife (balisong) from Singh and killed the latter.

 

    With these reports, the angle of a “love triangle” is conveniently eliminated, but for whose convenience, friends sympathetic to Singh could only speculate.

 

    But more than this “crime thriller” is the present state of Bulan’s Pantaleon Gotladera General Hospital (named after the late mayor Gotladera) – a deplorable state that the de Castro administration would rather sweep under the rug than help improve it.

 

    Every time the hospital’s condition is talked about Mayor de Castro’s ready-made-alibi is that “the LGU of Bulan is not responsible for its maintenance” since it is a “district hospital” and therefore under the care of the provincial government.

 

    Para ba’ng, “wala-akong –pakialam-d’yan-di-ko-naman-sakop-‘yan,-eh” na attitude, no?

 

    Such an attitude is somewhat expected from uncaring public officials. But Rosa de Castro’s recent pronouncement over the radio (on Imbing Asuncion’s Radyo Patrol Bulan last Friday, May 9, 2008) about the same “uncaring” attitude of the ongoing margaha or magnetite quarrying in the beaches of Bulan raises the eyebrows of Taga-Bulans.

 

    Rosa said, her office does not know anything about the operation of Cesar Detera’s Alexandra Mining since it (Alexandra) is engage in small scale mining which only the provincial government is involved in issuing mining permits.

 

    Whew! Pwede na talaga pang Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” ini si May!

 

    Kun an mga makaluluoy ngani na para tinda sin gulay sa relansi diri nira pipatawad sa pagsukot sin bayad para magtinda sin tinumpok na gaway o kamote, mao pa ada an milyun-milyon na negosyo sin paghakot san saato baybay pakadto sa China an diri nira sukuton sin bayad?

 

    I leave this to you to ponder. I will be back next week for more updates on our Crusade for Good Government.