Church parking for gov’t SUVs

One of Nosy Tarsee’s trusted snoops who doesn’t miss Church on a Sunday — or a Saturday, as it turns out — spotted something curious last weekend outside Santuario de San Antonio in rich man’s Forbes Park.

Parked at the church around 4:15 in the afternoon was a Hyundai SUV bearing plate number 10-NLRC AA. Government plates — National Labor Relations Commission plates, to be exact. Behind the wheel, our source says, was a heavyset woman dressed in black.

Nothing wrong with going to church. Plenty wrong with how she got there.

Under Administrative Order 239 and CoA Circular 75-6, government vehicles bearing official plates are barred from use on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, full stop. There are to be no personal errands, no leisure trips, no side quests. The rule doesn’t bend for good intentions — and it certainly doesn’t bend for confession.

Nosy Tarsee’s source, who watched the SUV sit there through what was presumably the length of a Mass, couldn’t resist the line: “I guess she used a government vehicle to go confess to... using a government vehicle.”

Somewhere, the patron saint of lost causes was taking notes.

Nosy Tarsee doesn’t yet know who was driving. We don’t know if it was her car to use, whether it was “just this once,” or whether NLRC has a policy on lending out plated vehicles for personal weekend errands. What we do know is the rule isn’t ambiguous, and the time stamp isn’t flattering.

Nosy Tarsee isn’t in the business of assuming the worst. Maybe there’s an explanation — an emergency, an authorized exception, a driver running an unrelated official errand who happened to double as chauffeur. We’ll leave room for that.

But absent one, this is exactly the kind of small, everyday violation that erodes public trust more than any scandal does: not malice, just entitlement, parked in plain sight outside a church on a Saturday afternoon.