Still no closure on the Aug. 23rd hostage crisis?

I really didn’t want to write anything about the Pacman-Margarito fight that the whole nation and I guess most of the world saw last Sunday in Dallas, Texas. But what else can we say? Maybe we should call it the mis-match of the decade! We all saw that Manny Pacquiao concentrated on Margarito’s face and that’s what 474 punches can do to a boxer’s face. Margarito had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance with a broken eye socket.

This brings us to the question whether the referee should have stopped that fight. I think he should have. So the big question is will the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight be the next thriller? The jubilation of the Filipinos have not yet died down and already Mayweather is questioning why Manny Pacquiao was able to rise up to win 8 Title fights in higher weight classes and yet he is as fast as he used to be? Obviously this is in line to Mayweather’s challenge to Pacman to take up an Olympic type of drug test… something that may just prevent this fight from happening.

Also US news sources reported that Antonio Margarito may have used drugs during the fight as he was able to withstand the punches of Pacman and still stay up to fight? Margarito doesn’t really have a good reputation. A couple of years ago, HBO announced to a televise audience that Margarito’s hands were found to be illegally wrapped before the fight and had to be re-wrapped three times in order to make them legal. Apparently, the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) found a substance that was used in his wraps that later hardened into a plaster-like shell.

All these issues will undoubtedly surface in the news in the next few days. Meanwhile, we Filipinos will savor the victory of Manny Pacquiao for having another record making fight… making Manny Pacquiao the greatest boxer of all time… until of course another boxer would surpass his record! But I don’t see anyone in the horizon in this generation that could beat Pacman’s record.

Incidentally a lot of people predicted that Pacman would finally lose that fight… well Manny proved them wrong! They compose only of less than 90% of the Filipino population. Also people who belittle Manny as a Congressman have come to realize that he is even better than most Congressmen who have been in Congress for many years. Lastly, just look at all the local and national newspapers that featured stories of Pacman’s great victory… you can say in Cebuano that “Gi Pakyaw in Pacman tanan!”

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Finally, because of the inaction by Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang expressed his disappointment that Philippine authorities have decided against filing criminal charges against those responsible for the blotched Aug. 23rd hostage incident at the Quirino grandstand where a deranged Police officer killed 8 Hong Kong tourists. I didn’t know that PNoy was able to meet up with Donald Tsang at the Asian Pacific Economic Council (APEC) meeting in Yokohama, where they were later joined by China’s President Hu Jintao.

I don’t blame Donald Tsang because even we Filipinos are not happy that this problem is no longer a priority under the Aquino administration. The old saying that “Justice delayed is Justice denied” seems to have been embraced by this administration. Why is PNoy scared to file criminal charges against those responsible for the blotched hostage crisis? Is it because he knew that if the cases were filed against his friends, they have a huge chance of losing those cases in a criminal court?

PNoy’s spokesman Ricky Carandang was quick to say that their meeting was “productive and another step toward closing this episode.” So the question we should ask PNoy is when will we see a closure to this ugly episode that brought shame to our country and the Filipino people? I hope that Pres. Aquino admits that a closure of this incident is very important to us so we can move forward.

Open the headlines and you will see that those pundits that have voted for PNoy in the last elections are proudly saying that they didn’t vote for him because we knew what kind of government he would be leading. But what’s happening today is that, even those who were rapid PNoy supporters are already slowly showing their public disappointment that indeed, the complaints against the PNoy administration that it is headed nowhere is true. We would have wanted the President to be decisive on that incident, but as it is, it seems that when it comes to protecting his friends, PNoy will do anything to make sure that they won’t fall. In the end, nothing much has changed.