BEFORE THEY WERE RARE BUT NOW THEY ARE WIDESPREAD

On July 2, 2018, a tragic incident occurred in the morning; Mayor Antonio Halili, Batangas Town Mayor was shot dead, and on July 3, 2018, Nueva Ecija Town Mayor Ferdinand Bote, was riddled with bullets and killed.

I remember vividly when I was third-year high school and that was on February 20, 1967, Mayor James Gordon, the father of Sen. Richard Gordon, while talking to a constituent on the first floor of city hall, he was gunned down by a lone assassin and to confuse about his real identity, he purposely let the undersized small hat he was wearing to fall down as he escaped from the crime scene. The killer was Nonito Alincastre,, an escaped inmate of the National Penitentiary.

Also, I was then grade 7 at Xavier University, and a breaking news one morning in the radio was that in that certain evening, in one of the stores at Divisoria, Cagayan de Oro City, a man stabbed to death the male Chinese owner in a robbery attempt. During that time, the incident caught the entire people of Cagayan de Oro and the Province of Misamis Oriental in tremendous fear and panic with our safety and security.

I am somewhat intimidated by the thought of giving any advice to anyone on anything. Nevertheless, after 41 years as a lawyer, and almost 30 yrs in the public service, I have run across disappointments and a number of life and death situations that there may be something I can offer. Anyhow, PRRD as I sized him up every day, he is a person who saw opportunity in every challenge and who dared greatly in hopes of great victories. So let’s allow him to think through in every complex problem and to succeed where others might have failed. My only advice is:

We have to be always prepared for any eventuality which could happen anytime. As a voice of experience, no matter what situation you have, don’t give up your will to live. You Have to Improvise, Adapt and Overcome however the situation and circumstance you are facing.

As the poem by Dylan Thomas goes, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In this connection, you have to be mentally prepared for possible violent confrontation. If you are shot or injured, that does not necessarily mean that you are going to die.  If you give up, if you lay down to die, then that’s exactly what will happen, you will die. If you give up the will to live, your spirit would dissipate, will disappear. If you lay down to die, most probably the subject that got you in the first place is going to come around the corner, come around the car whatever, and he’s going to shoot you at point blank range and you will die. So if you lay down to die, the message is you will die. You have got to maintain the will to live.