Last Friday’s drug test challenge hurled by former mayor Mike Rama to Mayor Tomas Osmeña came out of nowhere, and though the mayor accepted, he wanted it done on his terms.
Included on those terms was that hair samples should be taken aside from urine samples.
When Rama appeared in the designated public place and waited in vain for Osmeña to appear, he proceeded to a private testing facility and had his urine and hair samples taken.
While the urine samples tested negative for drugs, the results of the hair sample test would come out after two week. Osmeña had his hair sample taken at a government hospital.
To put last Saturday’s drug test challenge in proper perspective, it became an issue after Osmeña challenged Rama to take a random drug test before the elections.
Rama took a drug test twice with Cebu City Hall’s City Office for Substance Abuse Prevention (Cosap), and both came out negative for drug use yet Rama never made a big fuss about it.
So why take the drug test now when he is no longer the mayor? The issue is beyond Rama since it was taken to protect his political allies from the harassment of Osmeña’s camp and to end Osmeña’s accusation that Rama is a drug user.
A lie that is repeatedly raised and not corrected ultimately becomes the truth as the saying goes, so Rama finally corrected that lie with the truth by taking the drug tests.
But Osmeña is not going to take it sitting down as he is expected to continue to hammer the accusation to Rama.
The mayor wanted to point out that Rama was identified by President Rodrigo Duterte as a coddler of drug lords.
The only problem with that was that Rama went to Manila to see for himself the evidence or the circumstances that led to his inclusion in the list of drug lord protectors, but the authorities in Manila failed to show it to him.
It only goes to show that Rama is innocent of the accusations unfairly hurled against him.
We, the members of the Rama family, still trust Mike Rama and still believe that he is definitely not a drug dependent nor a coddler or protector of the illegal drug trade.
Now that the former mayor has submitted himself to drug testing, we are hoping the issue would end and that Rama be cleared of the false accusations.