Recalling Martial Law

Nightmares are not worth recalling.  That may be true if they occur in the privacy of our rooms, wrap in the eerie silence of the night.

But political nightmares deserved to be reminisced, debated upon, and reflected on, if we have to move forward as a nation.  A nation that has no common historical memory is just a hodge-podge of tribes without national identity.

On a personal level, I did not want to recall life under martial law.  The experiences were bad enough, and defying risks that went with the rallies were chilling to repeat.

But the innocent question of my ever precocious eight-year old boy changed the temper of yesterday’s 37^th martial law anniversary.

He asked:  “What is martial law? “  The lawyer in me wanted to parrot the constitutional basis of martial law, and the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court on the issue.  Of course, I would not have to discuss with my boy in a grandiose manner.  That would be Latin for him.

As I was about to tell my son what happened during the Marcos era, my fourteen-year old daughter proudly volunteered that according to the textbook, martial law was declared by then President Ferdinand Marcos on September 21, 1972.

That saved me from the cross-examination type questions of my boy.  He has the innocent knack of firing questions until you are left without answer.

But the incident led me to realize that while I, having experienced the horrors of martial law, could relate with increasing pulse rates and sweaty hands the dark years of Marcos dictatorship, the generation next to me, my daughter, has nothing but facts and statistics of the era, enough for her to win any quiz bee contest.

If only for my kids, I need to write this, to recall the events I personally experienced and the insights I learned under martial law in the hope that next time around, it is not only the facts but the full range of the tragic drama that was Marcos, must like the portrayal of the Greek dramas played out in the greater drama called life, that the succeeding generations could recount.

I was still seven years old and thirteen days when martial was declared.  There was no cable news, no newspapers in our barrio. There were only one or two transistor radios where the folks huddled to listen to the declaration of martial law.

Despite the innocence, I knew then there was some big news that day.  My father who kept a rifle hurriedly buried it somewhere.  Other folks did bury theirs too. Days after, soldiers inspected all the houses.  When they arrived in the house, I cowered in fear. I only glimpsed at the uniformed men, but I could hear the thuds of their boots, like the sound of the hooves of horsemen.

The beauty of pure innocence is that despite the horrors martial law wrought upon the people, I had carefree frolics with my friends in the pristine river, and the mountain treks in the then virginal forest, unmindful of the terror that gripped the people.

The burden with knowledge is the loss of innocence, and living in a gay abandon eludes forever.  Innocence is replaced with the angst for not acting on the dictates of what is right.

The high school years at the old Ateneo school just right there at the heartland of the city were spent reading books, and learning so many things from all fields.  The Jesuit-run school inspired critical thinking, the ability to see the issue in the broader perspective, as it were, in an eagle’s view.

Despite the adventures and misadventures of puberty though, the incarceration of the mayor of Cagayan de Oro Nene Pimentel in 1981 fired-up the protests of the already opposition-inclined people.  That too echoed in the corners of our classrooms.  Without political acumen or organization, we did have boycotts from our classes.  The reasons for our boycotts may have varied, but it reflected the over-all sentiment of the Cagayanons whose mayor was placed behind bars.

The horror of martial law was not anymore in somebody’s doorsteps but right there in the City Hall, the last citadel of democracy. It was an affront to the proud Cagayanons whose political pedigree came from the local heroes who fought many wars in the past.

Different folks have different ways of protesting. In the stage where the opposition was not yet so organized, the protesters were like sticks hoping to form a broom so they could have concerted and effective actions.  Meanwhile that the protest movement was still disorganized, opposition to martial law took different shapes, colors, and hues.  But the seed of revolution was unmistakably there already ready to explode in the most opportune time.

The martial law terror was unabated.  There was Elma, a relative who was shot on mere suspicion of being a sympathizer of the communists.

A good friend, the editor of the student publication of Ateneo de Davao was abducted, and no one knew what happened.  Just like other students  who were missing, she was another statistics of the martial law terror.

Killing fields were not only popular in North Vietnam.  We also shared the infamy.

The guns were blazing too in areas like Claveria, Salay, Lantad, Taglimao, and almost everywhere. In all these areas, human rights abuses were the norm rather than the exception.

Power is intoxicating. It can be delusional. After having wielded power without accountability, the powers-that-be are emboldened, and regard themselves as invincible, that they could commit abuses with impunity.

When the rulers do not see anymore the limits to their powers their doom begins.

Right before the glare of national and international opinion, Ninoy Aquino was martyred on August 21, 1983 as he deplaned from his exile in the US. That was stupid thing to do.  But drank with power, the rulers did not see it coming the start of their defeat with the mortal shot at Ninoy’s body. The mortal body died, but the immutable ideals came to life.

That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Suddenly, the disorganized protests had a common voice, a rallying point from which to launch their battle against the government, a battle plan drawn-out within the framework of the ideals of democracy.

I found myself co-founding a student political party at Xavier Universit.  The student party was founded on the precept that the students cannot live in the ivory tower of the academe but must lead the people in the struggle against the dictatorship.

There were rallies, civil disobedience, and other forms of protest.  And just like all other student leaders who dared challenged the dictatorship, the “red tag” was written in my forehead by the military, a tag that meant I could be “salvaged”, misnomer for assassination.

It was most unfortunate.  I knew of students who abhorred communism as much as they deplored Marcos dictatorship.  But in a war-like situation, the protagonists become color-blind.  Infiltration of the ranks of the students by the military and the reds were rampant.  Many were killed on mere suspicions.

I just laughed off the “red tag”, the communist label.  I have thoroughly studied Marxism in its primary sources and read the history of communism.  The flaws of the communist ideology are just glaring to ignore.  Embracing communism would be prostituting knowledge for expediency.

Expediency, I knew so many brilliant students who joined the communist’s movement for that reason. They joined the communist movement because it offered them concrete plans with which they could topple the dictator.  But I did not judge the folly or brilliance of their decisions. Instead of judging, there were tactical alliances of students from different colors in the political spectrum joining hands just to oust the dictator.

The students have the time, the mental prowess, and the fire in the belly to mount concerted actions against the dictator.  Organizing the students in Cagayan de Oro was the most logical thing to do and our group, composed of leaders from the left to the center, did manage to awaken the students.

The streets of Cagayan de Oro saw mass actions, protest marches, prayer rallies, and the famous “Welga Ng Bayan”. Xavier University students joined with students from Don Mariano, Cagayan de Oro College, Liceo de Cagayan and Lourdes College.

Activism was mainstream. The rising tide of dissent could not be doused anymore.

Ninoy was not the only martyr.  The casualties were many.  Several of the student leaders were gone, either they went underground, or they were invited by the military henchmen and never to return again.  Those were brilliant students whose whereabouts I have not heard of since.

For my daughter, my missing friends would just be mere statistics.  But after she reads this piece, hopefully, she may feel the pulse of life, and the tears of pain Martial Law has shed in the Philippine landscape.

The lawyers’ role

After decades of silence, I decided to write for public consumption.  Writing, of course, has been a daily dose for me.  There are just too many legal briefs to prepare, and deadlines to beat. Lawyers do these for a fee, except in rare pro bono cases.

But lawyers too are citizens, as Manny Valdehuesa, a fellow columnist, aptly said.  The practice of law is not a rehearsal of some sort that you can undo several times over.  Whenever and wherever justice has failed, there are some innocent souls who languish in the damp and cold concrete prison cells, and the guilty ones who, having the financial resource, go scot-free. When this happens, a social fabric is torn apart. Society weakens.

Lawyers are not gladiators in court, to be paid handsomely if they fought well in battle.  Law, to be a truly effective tool for social order and peace, requires competent and conscientious practitioners, people who advocate the higher ends of justice, sans the fee.

Definitely, we do not need the bearers of the law who are mum amid the spate of bribery in the justice system – in the law enforcement, in the prosecution, and yes, even in the bench.  These are lawyers  who  are  only up to fattening their pockets, a practice of law without a social conscience.

Look around.  Even the blind could see, and even the deaf could hear the cries of injustice.

There is Taglimao, a barangay which is near the city proper in terms of distance but would take an hour to reach due to bad roads, roads which are fit for off-road racing. Do the city officials know that Taglimao is part of their governance?  To make matter worse, the mostly unlettered residents are being harassed by barangay officials either by threat of bodily harm or legal suits.  That is plain terrorism.

Does anybody know that within our protected watershed areas, there is a plan to construct a cassava processing plant which threatens our potable water with cyanide which is a by-product of cassava? Who will stop this incessant threat to our environment?

For the incompetence of the prosecution to smell the fabrication of a case, one Geronimo Banac was indicted for rape, jailed for seven years in Lumbia city jail, and finally acquitted and released for lack of evidence.  Who will now compensate him for the loss of his dignity and sense of pride?

Take our lawmakers.  They extended the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law up to June 30, 2009, with a condition: lands would be covered under agrarian reform voluntarily.  They must be joking.  No landowners, not even the church, would voluntarily give up their lands.  Who will now fight for the cause of farmers who, in the language of then Raul Manglapus, “have been in the bondage of the lands they till”?

In a state of injustice, the bearers of the law must advocate, and fight ferociously as gladiators, in the court of justice, and in the court of public opinion as well.  But unlike gladiators of old times, the lawyers should bear witness to truth, law, and justice,  without expecting anything in return but the altruistic feeling that they too as citizens, have helped keep social order and communal peace.

There is a joke about lawyers.  In the genesis story, God created the earth, and gave order to the universe.  But before there was order, chaos presided.  Lawyers, who preside on chaos, therefore must have preceded creation.

This is an unfortunate joke, a virtual verdict of the law practice in the Philippines.  True indeed, there are misfits within the ranks.  Go to Manila, and you see  lawyers who put up a small mobile office to solicit notarial services.  There are those who are retained by drug-lords and gambling lords and do no lawyering duties except negotiating for the release of drug pushers or gambling dens operators, and inevitably bribe government officials. Others still are bragging in public about their close relations with a fiscal, or a judge , and could therefore fix a case.

This kind of lawyering takes away the majesty of the law, the true and noble function of the law as instrument developed through social evolution.  Out of the chaotic earthly life, it is the law that gives order, through peace pacts among warring tribes, treaties among the present day states, and the civil and criminal laws within a nation.  Take away the law, and true indeed, chaos will reign.

In a state of injustice, in the muddied waters of law and order, the law must spark; otherwise, we might go back to the evolutionary age when the fittest survive, and the weak, extinct. We would then be nothing but members of Darwin’s animal kingdom: less divine, more brutish.

In the new year 2009, let the law spark, within our hearts, specially in  the conscience of the bearers of the law.

Department Store of Justice

What do you do when you go the department store?  Pay. What do you get in return? Goods. 

The case of the now famous Alabang boys did not make  the Department of Justice a store of justice, but only spelled in bold letters what we already knew even before: It is a store. We may hasten to add, it is not the more decent stores in the malls; it is more like a public market where people haggle, cajole, if not coerce, for the lowest price.
 

And Justice Secretary Gonzales is the chief vendor.

Already circulating before was the buzz that under Gonzales’  helm, the department has been populated with fixcals, err fixers, sidekicks of the chief who sleuths around the department sniffing, just like hungry hounds, for cases involving the rich and famous, from whom to extract blood money. When these men sniff blood, they send feelers to the litigants and offer to help (read: fix). The bid is whisphered to the chief, and the transaction is perfected with a wink of an eye.

The department has been involved in bribery scandals before.  But the Alabang boys case tops the list in terms of the attention it generated largely due to the rigmarole between the pillars of justice system – the law enforcement in PDEA, and the prosecution arm.

The Alabang boys who were arrested in entrapment operations by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had been charged with drug-pushing, Theirs is not an ordinary case. These boys reside in the exclusive enclave for the rich and famous known as Alabang, which is a few kilometers away from the heartland of Metro Manila.

This is a case that could trigger the fixers at the department store of Gonzales salivate involuntary, and fixing they did.

The PDEA formally charged the Alabang boys - Richard Brodett, Jorge Joseph and Joseph Tecson – with drug-pushing, a crime carrying the supreme penalty of reclusion perpetua under Republic Act No. 9165.

Prosecutor John Resado dismissed the charge against the Alabang boys citing technicalities mandated by Republic Act No. 9165 such as the absence of proper inventory of the goods seized from the suspects, the manner of warrant less arrests when  shots were unnecessarily fired, and the buy-bust operation by only one poseur buyer is untenable.

The resolution alone could easily stand legal scrutiny.  To Prosecutor Resado’s credit, he knows his law, compared to the lousy police work by the PDEA in not complying with the mandates of  the new drug law.  What authority does PDEA have to directly shoot at the suspect who was speeding away, aiming directly to his body?.  The PDEA agents should have aimed at the tires to force the vehicle to stop than shoot directly at the suspect.  It was a miracle the suspect dodged the bullets.

Unfortunately, for Prosecutor Resado, his resolution dismissing the case was clouded with suspicions, and evidences tending to prove bribery come aplenty.  There was this prepared draft of the resolution bearing the seal of the Department of Justice, a draft prepared by Atty. Verano who is lawyering for the Alabang boys. There was Justice Undersecretary Ricardo Blancaflor interceding personally for the Alabang boys despite that the case does not fall directly under his office.  Of course, you have PDEA and DOJ officials throwing murk at each other.

The badges of bribery are all written in bold letters in the wall.  The paper trail is showing in the Banco De Oro account of Prosecutor Resado when he deposited P800,000.00 on the day the case was dismissed.  To cap it all, Prosecutor Resado refused to waive the right to secrecy of his bank account for reasons that he wanted to keep his privacy.  What privacy he was talking about?  The press is lynching him.  Public opinion has convicted him.  The least he could do to save his skin is reveal the bank account so his name would be cleared, that is, if his bank account will not reveal his culpability in the first place.

A lawyer-friend who is based in Manila, and who has to deal with the shenanigans of the DOJ and PDEA, said: “Pare, manok-manok lang yan. Hindi land nagkasundo nang sharing.”  ”Manok manok”? I quipped. Accordingly,  one manok( a tagalog word for chicken)  represents the letter M in one million.  One “manok” means the official is asking one million.   In the DENR, “sandwich” means bribe money. Still, in another agency, the understood idiom is “pizza”.  Corruption not only hides in the three-piece suit; it speaks in double entendre too.
 

In the committee hearing of Congress, Prosecutor Resado charged that PDEA lawyer Lazaro attempted to bribe him, telling the him to drop the case in exchange for bribe money.  Knowing that PDEA in the past has been engaged in “hulidap” –  arresting a person and extorting money  in exchange of not filing the case –  the charged against Atty. Lazaro cannot be stranger than fiction.

But the investigation must now stop.  The National Bureau of Investigation has cleared the DOJ officials with any wrongdoing.  The NBI which is under the DOJ chief has virtually cleared the latter.

How can a moro-moro be better staged than this?  A subordinate affirming the boss’ innocence. Secretary Gonzales could have well signed his clearance certificate and acquit himself.

What we have is a smudged image justice, if a tainted one is justice at all. Perhaps, we are just raising the bars of justice too high.  You do not expect anything fair in the Department Store of Justice.  You better go to the malls.  You may get a fair deal.

let the law spark

After decades of silence, I decided to write for public consumption. Writing, of course, has been a daily dose for me. There are just too many legal briefs to prepare, and deadlines to beat. Lawyers do these for a fee, except in rare pro bono cases.

But lawyers too are citizens, as Manny Valdehuesa, a fellow columnist, aptly said. The practice of law is not a rehearsal of some sort that you can undo several times over. Whenever and wherever justice has failed, there are some innocent souls who languish in the damp and cold concrete prison cells, and the guilty ones who, having the financial resource, go scot-free. When this happens, a social fabric is torn apart. Society weakens.

Lawyers are not gladiators in court, to be paid handsomely if they fought well in battle. Law, to be a truly effective tool for social order and peace, requires competent and conscientious practitioners, people who advocate the higher ends of justice, sans the fee.

Definitely, we do not need the bearers of the law who are mum amid the spate of bribery in the justice system – in the law enforcement, in the prosecution, and yes, even in the bench. These are lawyers who are only up to fattening their pockets, a practice of law without a social conscience.

Look around. Even the blind could see, and even the deaf could hear the cries of injustice.

There is Taglimao, a barangay which is near the city proper in terms of distance but would take an hour to reach due to bad roads, roads which are fit for off-road racing. Do the city officials know that Taglimao is part of their governance? To make matter worse, the mostly unlettered residents are being harassed by barangay officials either by threat of bodily harm or legal suits. That is plain terrorism.

Does anybody know that within our protected watershed areas, there is a plan to construct a cassava processing plant which threatens our potable water with cyanide which is a by-product of cassava? Who will stop this incessant threat to our environment?

For the incompetence of the prosecution to smell the fabrication of a case, one Geronimo Banac was indicted for rape, jailed for seven years in Lumbia city jail, and finally acquitted and released for lack of evidence. Who will now compensate him for the loss of his dignity and sense of pride?

Take our lawmakers. They extended the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law up to June 30, 2009, with a condition: lands would be covered under agrarian reform voluntarily. They must be joking. No landowners, not even the church, would voluntarily give up their lands. Who will now fight for the cause of farmers who, in the language of then Raul Manglapus, “have been in the bondage of the lands they till”?

In a state of injustice, the bearers of the law must advocate, and fight ferociously as gladiators, in the court of justice, and in the court of public opinion as well. But unlike gladiators of old times, the lawyers should bear witness to truth, law, and justice, without expecting anything in return but the altruistic feeling that they too as citizens, have helped keep social order and communal peace.

There is a joke about lawyers. In the genesis story, God created the earth, and gave order to the universe. But before there was order, chaos presided. Lawyers, who preside on chaos, therefore must have preceded creation.

This is an unfortunate joke, a virtual verdict of the law practice in the Philippines.  True indeed, there are misfits within the ranks.  Go to Manila, and you see  lawyers who put up a small mobile office to solicit notarial services.  There are those who are retained by drug-lords and gambling lords and do no lawyering duties except negotiating for the release of drug pushers or gambling dens operators, and inevitably bribe government officials. Others still are bragging in public about their close relations with a fiscal, or a judge , and could therefore fix a case.

This kind of lawyering takes away the majesty of the law, the true and noble function of the law as instrument developed through social evolution.  Out of the chaotic earthly life, it is the law that gives order, through peace pacts among warring tribes, treaties among the present day states, and the civil and criminal laws within a nation. Take away the law, and true indeed, chaos will reign.

In a state of injustice, in the muddied waters of law and order, the law must spark; otherwise, we might go back to the evolutionary age when the fittest survive, and the weak, extinct. We would then be nothing but members of Darwin’s animal kingdom: less divine, more brutish.

In the new year 2009, let the law spark, within our hearts, specially in  the conscience of the bearers of the law.

when the law breaks down

When lawmen mauled the hapless Roberto Martinez last December 3, 2008 in a funeral parlor this city, who later was found dead near the Taguanao bridge, there can be no other exhibition of lawlessness worst than this.

We saw Jocjoc Volante brazenly lying before the senators. Every day, simple infractions of throwing garbage in the streets literally litter our city. Taxi drivers in the airport mulct passengers with the “pakyaw” basis in derogation of the rates established by the LTFRB. Even the beating red-lights in a traffic jam is a daily dose for drivers.

This disregard for the law, even how worse, can still be corrected. If there is political will, the violators can be apprehended and meted out the full force of the law.

But when it is lawmen that maul, and by circumstantial evidence, kill a civilian, then there is something terribly wrong with our justice system. Who will now protect the innocent from the criminals if the law enforcers are committing the crime, and do so in a manner so flagrantly and in the presence of so many people?

Roberto Martinez, the record reveals, got the ire of a policeman. He was slapped, and in a retaliation later, he hit the said policeman. He was later on in flight from the irate and pursuing police officers, and he went, ironically, into a funeral parlor where the vigil for the dead was going on. This being a big funeral parlor, there were many persons around presumably weeping for the dead. But they may have as well weep for the state of disorder in the Philippines.

Roberto Martinez, a witness recalled, was finally cornered by their pursuers. He raised his hands in surrender, and pleaded mercy, but bullets were pumped into his knees, causing him to fell into the ground. He was kicked and further mauled and was hauled into a vehicle. His lifeless body was found the following day near the Taguanao bridge, in barangay Indahag, this city.

One may argue that this is not the worst of the state of disorder. These policemen are plain thugs clothed in a policeman’s uniform. They may have joined the police service not on the basis of competence and qualifications, but simply of “padrino” , a system of patronage politics when one gets appointed if he has political backing. The argument may go this way: “This is an exception rather than rule; a case of few rotten tomatoes in a basket.”

Due to what happened, one may scream bloody murder. But wait for the flourish, err the pouring of hot chili in a gaping wound.

Police Director Isagani Genabe of the City, in the initial interviews said that he did not conduct the investigation yet because there has been no formal complaint lodge in his office. Imagine the innards twisting in revulsion to the statement.

The corpus delicti, the body of the crime, has been found. The lifeless body of Roberto Martinez was found, bearing bruises, stab and gunshot wounds. Confronted with the gory details, the police czar has the gall to say that the investigation will commence upon the filing of the formal complaint.

The police as a force is tasked to protect lives and properties, and to enforce the rule of law. When somebody dies of a violent death, there is obviously a criminal out there that should be apprehended. This the police must pursue. When a bomb explodes, the police must go to the site and investigate.

Or should the police wait for an explosion in its precinct or the dead body delivered in its doorsteps, and the police blotter written in blood of the victim, before the investigation may begin?

What happened to Roberto Martinez is a sad footnote in the history of the city. Yes, there have been gruesome crimes already in the past. But these crimes were committed mostly by civilians, and if ever a policeman was involved, he acted alone or in conspiracy with civilians. But this one is the worst. The lawmen conspired, and mauled their victim, in the presence of so many people who were weeping for the dead in the vigil, in the funeral parlor.

Weep we must, for the victim, for the arrogant display of authority, for the lackadaisical attitude of our police czar.

There can be no breakdown of law and order worst than this.