By Behn Fer. Hortaleza, Jr.

Pangasinan (31 July) -- It doesn't look good, to say the least, for local officials to be wandering off to various destinations abroad in these times of crisis and calamities where no one can say, least of all PAG-ASA of Phivolcs, when and where the next of Nature will explode.

That's not to mention the money spent for such foreign travels, official or otherwise, that prudence dictates can often be ably undertaken by just a modest couple of top men, not an entourage.

Other local officials may just be taking the cue from the national officials who are widely known to have their own itchy feet for travel but all things being equal, the former local officials cannot escape the fact that they are more directly responsible-and needed-by their constituents to look after them, preside over their welfare assistance in their most pressing hours of need.

To think that others of their kind (local officials) can so diligently stay and actually report daily to their offices like Urdaneta's Mayor Amadeo R. Perez or some mayors in the poorer municipalities who send their alter-egos instead to trips, often just socials, "requiring" their presence in foreign shores. If they leave at all, one can be sure it is of the most urgent and vital nature of trip abroad.

Rank, as they say, has its privileges, to include globe-trotting at taxpayer expense. But along with that oath of office they took-in case many of them have forgotten-is the unstated tradition of delicadeza where officials are expected to behave and be more discreet with their "official abuse."