Mayor Lim: Consistent crimefighter
The City of Manila’s Mayor Alfredo Lim made our day again. He has once more shown how consistent and admirable an enemy of crime he is.The Filipino “Dirty Harry” vowed last Monday not to lift a finger to help his son, Manuel, who was arrested in a drug bust.
He said “Manuel should be man enough to face the music. I will not protect him. I will not lift a finger to help him. Whatever trouble he has got himself into he must bear by himself.”
Manuel is a 44-year-old man. He had been arrested with two other suspects for allegedly trying to sell methamphetamine—also known as shabu, which is the most popular illegal drug in the country. They did not know that their sale was a sting. Their buyer was an undercover agent of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
Police have filed charges against the young Lim and his companions. If convicted, Manuel could face a long prison term for selling shabu.
A model LGU official
We have always admired Mayor Lim for being a staunch anti-crime crusader. He cleaned Manila’s red-light districts of prostitutes and drug dealers in his previous (pre-Lito Atienza) terms as mayor of the Philippine capital. He is a model for other local government officials.
Not too many Filipinos liked his use of the spray-paint in one of his anti-drug campaigns. What he did was spray-paint warnings on the the houses of suspected drug pushers. This was criticized by activists as a violation of the house-owners human rights. Besides, they reasoned, some of the residents in the spray-painted houses—the wives and children and parents of the actual drug pusher—were most likely innocent. What if some crazed anti-drug crusader threw a grenade at the house?
Mayor Lim relented and stopped his unusual campaign. But it was effective. Many of Manila’s drug pushers moved to other places—especially Pasay and the Baclaran area.
We need more public officials with Mayor Lim’s honesty and consistency as a crime-fighter.
It must have been painful for him to make the decision to let the law take its course in the case of his flesh-and-blood Manuel.
Mayor Lim’s posture runs counter to the feudalistic and overly-personalistic mentality of the Filipinos. That mentality is often the source of corruption in this country.
A less strong-willed and honest powerholder than Mayor Lim would have surely sprung Manuel out. The mayor could have easily managed such an operation. He is after all a former chief of the national police and a former senator. But it would have sullied his integrity.
If President Arroyo had been as firm a crime and corruption fighter as Mayor Lim, she would not have to suffer for the alleged corruption of her underlings—and perhaps some close friends and political creditors—whose wrongdoings are being exposed in Senate investigations.
Many people of good will are not joining the anti-Arroyo forces holding rallies and trying to organize the public into forming a massive movement that will force her out of office.
Among these are the Catholic bishops and the impressive body of former senior government officials (FSGO). These two groups have made sharp assessments of government corruption. They see the President as—at least—negligent in curbing corruption that has cost this country scores of billions. The FSGO says she must be central in these alleged corrupt deals.
Yet they do not want to add their voices to the call for her resignation or ouster by people power.
They want her to continue being president until her term ends in 2010. But they do insist that she must zealously go after her administration’s monsters of corruption.
We hope the President heeds the CBCP and the FSGO. Doing so can’t possibly be as painful as Mayor Lim’s resolve not to lift a finger to help his son out of the mess he has put himself in.
Lim as Malacañang anti-corruption czar
Here’s our inspired thought: Mayor Alfredo Lim—despite being an opposition party member and a close friend of former President Estrada who has of late been actively speaking against President Arroyo and asking her to resign—is one of those men of goodwill who want President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to finish her term.
He has vowed to keep her safe from any force that will unconstitutionally push her out of the Palace.
Why not make Mayor Lim the Palace’s anti-corruption czar? He can be that while keeping his job as Manila mayor.
But, of course, if she takes our unsolicited suggestion, she has to give Mayor Lim the proper equipment and resources to collar the thieves and scoundrels in the corridors of power.
