Mabilog may quit politics in 2019

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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Sunday, September 17, 2017

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ON THE premise that Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog is sick of diabetes due to stress, his detractors ask, then why does he need to seek treatment in an undisclosed place abroad with his wife Marivic and their two children in tow? Does he not trust doctors in Iloilo City?

No, Virginia, it’s not diabetes per se that he is distressed of. Methinks it’s the “mightiest” Filipino armed with “Duterte’s list” who has aggravated his illness. The mayor is in that more-than-one-year-old restricted list of drug lords, protectors and “narco-politicians.”

Next question: If Mabilog is not one of them, why is he so fearful of President Rodrigo Duterte? Should he not have cleared himself already?

That good question deserves a good answer:  Sometime last August, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) cleared Mabilog of illegal drug connections. Within the week, PDEA regional director Gil Pabilona was also “cleared” of his post. His successor, Wardley Getalla, has never commented on the matter.

Anybody else in Mabilog’s shoes would be as wary, knowing that two politicians in the same list – mayors Rolando Espinosa and Reynaldo Padojinog – had died in the hands of the police, rubbed out before the “eyes” of disabled CCTV cameras.

Regardless of public perception, the two “narco-politicians” should have been presumed innocent. To quote Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution (Bill of Rights), “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.”

No less than President Rodrigo Duterte’s son Paolo, the vice mayor of Davao City, claimed such presumption of innocence in a Senate hearing called to probe the entry of P6.4-billion shabu from China. Is that not a case of a vice mayor enjoying better treatment than a mayor?

The prevailing belief among Ilonggos is that Mabilog just happened to have earned the ire of then presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte, who came to campaign in Iloilo City in the first week of May 2016 but was not allowed to use Freedom Grandstand. He spoke at La Paz Plaza instead.

Rep. Jerry Treñas and a few stalwarts from Digong’s political party, PDP-Laban, have tried to bridge the gap between the two but to no avail, even if the mayor has already resigned from the Liberal Party.

Mabilog’s allies at the city council have not taken up the cudgels for him, as if any adversarial move on their part could endanger their own political future.

Que vadis, Mayor Jed?

I guess Mayor Mabilog would quit politics at the end of his term in 2019. You see, there was a time when he told me in an interview in 2010 that he would quit politics at age 50.

And so when he ran for his third and final term for mayor in May 2016, I asked him whether he had forgotten to return to private life at 50.

“Am still 50,” he quipped matter-of-factly. “I will turn 51 in September yet.”

Jed Patrick Mabilog, born on Sept. 20, 1965, is the fifth of 10 children born to spouses Jose Chavez Mabilog and the former Melchorita Locsin Escalante of Barangay Tap-oc, Molo, Iloilo City, where their ancestral home still stands.

As soon as he graduated and got his BS Biology diploma at the West Visayas State University (WVSU), he proceeded to Medicine proper but quit after only three years. At age 22, he worked as salesman for the brokerage firm Delbros. A competing firm, K-Line, pirated him and assigned him to Canada, where he married the former Maria Victoria Griengo.

He had never aspired to be a politician. One day in 2004 while on home vacation, however, then Mayor Jerry Treñas lured him into running for councilor. He won. That started his political journey. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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