Sinulog: Too many just had one too many!

With the Sinulog Festival over and done with, the spiritual battle of good versus evil continues. Today, the 7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights will be holding a three-day conference at the Philippine International Convention Center. Expected to attend this conference are the top non-governmental organizations who makes a living out of aborting defenseless babies through abortion and contraception.

The gall of these people holding its conference in Philippine shores, thumbing their noses against the pro-Catholic Filipino people and the Catholic Church which is at the forefront of this spiritual battle. Of course these NGO's couldn't have held this conference here without the blessings of our top government officials, this is why their main guest speaker is the number one promoter of the RH Law, no less than President Benigno "PNoy" Aquino III, whose Catholicism in my book is already in question.

To counter this spiritual threat to our nation, the pro-life groups today will hold a prayer vigil, imploring God almighty to help us in this spiritual battle. We hope and pray that since last June 8, 2013, when the Philippines was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary our Blessed Mother, would, by her own power, confuse the enemy so that they cannot decide on any issue that they would be dealing with in the next three days.

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Last Sunday, my wife's cousin, Manang Inda Manuel Gage (she's one of the original members of the fabled Bayanihan Dance Troupe) arrived from the US to visit her ailing mother, Tia Marie Manuel. Unfortunately, she could not leave for Ormoc City due to cancellations of the fast ferries due to Typhoon "Agaton", so we brought our cousin to the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel for lunch to savor the last day of their Sugbusog Food Festival. From there, we decided to go home due to the snarl traffic and instead watch the Sinulog Festival on TV, which was shown live on SkyCable's channel 62 and MyTV's channel 30. So in a way, we really didn't miss watching the Sinulog.

Knowing that there were more than 2 million people who joined the solemn procession on Saturday, I expected a bigger crowd to line up for the Sinulog Parade or Mardi Gras. There is no doubt that the Sinulog Festival has been dubbed as the nation's top tourism drawer because so many foreigners who are within two to three hours flying time from Asia to Cebu would swoop down here to have fun in the Sinulog Festival. Yet we had a huge crowd even with the fact that many ferries to and from Mindanao had to be cancelled due to the strong waves and airlines, too, had cancelled flights.

Unfortunately, there were many in the crowd who just had too much fun, literally drinking until they dropped! As we already expected and this has been happening for the past six year al-ready, the parties along Juana Osmeña st. have become as bois-terous and rowdy as ever. Two years ago, when I wanted to walk back home from Mango Ave. you couldn't penetrate the sea of drunken humanity from Mango Ave. corner to the corner of Ma. Cristina st. You can rename this street "Drunken Alley!" 

However that is not to say that there were no drunken par-ties outside Juana Osmeña st. practically in almost all the areas around the Sinulog Parade route, small parties in tents with super ear-splitting loud music added to the melee. Of course we got a lot of text messages if the Sinulog Foundation could prevent or stop the drinking of hard liquor or beer. This is something that the offi-cials of the Sinulog Foundation ought to think and ponder before things get out of hand and suddenly, tourists would avoid coming to the Sinulog Festival. I'm not trying to be a spoilsport, but they better believe that this was one Sinulog where too many had one too many.

I submit that Juana Osmeña st. was the epicenter of the Si-nulog grand party after the Sinulog Parade was over. In fact when I got into my office early morning yesterday, there were still a lot of broken beer bottles that were not yet removed and the foul stench of vomit permeated the building complex. This never hap-pened in the past Sinulog and this should be the challenge that Sinulog Foundation officials should seriously look into.

I was looking at the various TV footages of the Sinulog Parade and the photos of friends and their friends in Facebook and let me say it loud and clear that there were many people who were below the legal age drinking beer and other alcoholic beverages, many of them girls, whose parents probably didn't know that their kids were scantily dressed and drenched in beer. There is no question that the revelers were totally out of control and I challenge the Sinulog organizers to take control next year or worse things might just happen and then people will regret coming to the Sinulog Festival.

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