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By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

ENG’R. Betty Olivar, a faculty member of the University of Pangasinan, was returning to Dagupan City that night of Dec. 30 after visiting her relatives in her hometown in Isabela. She was just minutes away from the city and it was almost midnight. She was looking forward to finally get home and get a good rest after that long Victory Liner trip.

Then the unthinkable happened. While the bus was cruising that unlighted portion of the national highway in Sta. Barbara with full mango trees on both of its sides, she thought she heard a dull thud. Then she felt pain in her left eye. She’d been hit. Somebody had just stoned her bus and it went straight to her.

At the hospital minutes later, doctors found her eye crushed. She lost it.

Engr. Olivar’s experience is certainly not the first case in that notorious part of Sta. Barbara. There have been others before her who were similarly injured just because some drug-crazed individuals enjoy throwing stones at passing vehicles as if these were just pieces of moving plastic targets in a carnival shooting gallery.

The tragic part of this is that they get away with it mainly because no one from the bus, not even the driver, saw the culprits. Or if somebody did, in an unlighted highway, these persons will just be nothing but silhouettes and positively identifying them later will just be a bigger problem. In this country, even if a criminal has been caught with a smoking gun, it will still be difficult, tedious and costly to get him/her convicted.

The ideal thing to do of course, would have been for the police to investigate. But we know, that this is the last thing they would do. With the very limited number of our policemen now in a typical town sending an investigator in the area will just be a waste of time because nothing will come out of it. They’d rather wait for the next stoning of a passing bus and hope that the culprit will be caught.

But I am not convinced nobody really knew the culprit. Chances are barangay officials know who that person is, and their first reaction would be to protect him/her rather than having the police get him/her.

In the barangay where I grew up, we knew who the drunkards were; we knew who were violent when drunk; we knew those who use drugs; we even knew the thieves.

For now, since lighting the whole stretch of the road would be next to impossible, barangay officials must now devise a way to prevent these merciless individuals from doing these senseless stoning again.

* * * * *

Early birds. It looks like it will be a four-cornered fight in the 2007 gubernatorial race in the province, assuming of course that the no-el proposal of the defunct Consultative Commission will be junked.

From what we are hearing, the gubernatorial contenders as of today are sixth district Rep. Conrado Estrella III, second district Rep. Amado Espino, Vice Gov. Oscar Lambino and Dr. Jamie Eloise Agbayani, Gov. Victor Agbayani’s wife.

If this pushes through, it will be the ultimate test of the Agbayani invincibility that the Urduja House so often flaunts. When the old Agbayani died, politics was never the same again for the Agbayanis.

In the 2004 elections, the governor’s brother, Louie, ran against Rep. Arthur Celeste in the first district in what they thought would be a lopsided election considering Louie’s qualification as an Atenean and Celeste’s credential as a former barangay captain of Luciente Uno. The province’s first district and the entire western Pangasinan is also an Agbayani bailiwick. Louie, of course, was clobbered.

And in Sual, where Louie ruled as a mayor, the governor’s sister, Victoria, was defeated by a young political neophyte, John Arcinue. We were told that during the elections, it was in Sual where the Urduja House literally poured its resources, including its political operators.

It will be very interesting to see how they will campaign, when the time comes, for Dr. Jamie. Will the Agbayani magic still work? Let’s see.