Uncut

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    JUST LIKE that.

    Putative Provincial Administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu decreed on Thursday that – as a news report carried – “in the continued implementation of Ordinance 261, truck owners, especially those with backloads, are no longer required to have their truck sidings cut as prescribed in the local law’s implementing rules and regulations.”

    The most contentious issue that launched a hundred trucks and caused the Capitol siege of January 5,  the very reason for the “killing” of Ordinance 261 itself, has been – as though on mere afterthought, if not sheer whimsy – discarded. Just like a soiled napkin.

    Dabu, it was reported, declared that truckers applying for the still on-going accreditation, are no longer “forced” to cut the sidings of their trucks.

    “It is a measure agreed upon by the truckers and the technical working group. The cutting is now voluntary on the part of the truck owners but it still has to pass through the TWG who will recommend if they will just be marked with lines or have it cut. Many have complied with it and many more welcomed the move.” So was Dabu reported as saying in the local newspapers.

    Ain’t there some contradictions there?

    “Cutting is voluntary on the part of the truck owners” but at the same time “the TWG…will recommend if they will just be marked with lines or have it cut.” The truck drivers to be forced by the TWG to volunteer to have the sidings of their trucks cut. Ah, what ambiguity!

    So with this “No more compulsory truck-cutting,” was not a grave injustice done to those truck drivers who dutifully complied with the IRR and had no choice but to have their trucks cut to size?

    Changing the rules mid-game is a no-no in sports, moreso in law. And to think that this Dabu is supposed to be no-nonsense lawyer!

    Coming as it did after reports of “uncut” trucks being allowed passage though quarry checkpoints, the “No compulsory truck-cutting” announcement served as a post-dated legitimization of a patent violation of the IRR.

    We quoted in this space last Friday that those “uncut” trucks reportedly belonged to very close associates of Mike Tapang, the Panlilio-Dabu-recognized president of the Federation of Pampanga Truckers Inc. (FPTI).

    Should we blame now Benedicto Lacsamana’s faction of the FPTI to cry “partiality” over this lopsided implementation of the IRR?

    A non-written amendment on-whim with retroactive effect, the “No compulsory truck-cutting” proviso of the IRR definitively is. Specially crafted to benefit some few favored pets, over a greater majority of despised pests.

    This is the praxis of law . Per Panlilio and Dabu.

    Weep.  


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