Arrogance of power

Who do not want power?  Juan de la Cruz?  Priests?  Politicians?

Juan de la Cruz wants power desperately.  He has suffered injustices for so long.  He could not even eat three times a day much more send his children to school. With power, his woes would be over.

The hierarchy of power in the Catholic Church, and other religions are very elaborate.  Subordinates are directed to observe blind obedience to the superiors.  After all, the superiors are held to be the vicars of Christ. Power is wielded so the apostolate may be propagated.

Politicians occupy positions of power.  They hold the reigns of the government.  With millions of constituents under them, they need the awesome and vast state powers so the common good may be promoted.

Power per se is not wrong.  Without it, there can be no control, no peace and order in the world, and even in the universe.  Can you imagine what happens to the cosmos if the fallen angel Lucifer were as powerful as God?

The problem sets in when there is disconnect between the ideal and reality.  This is particularly of strong significance in case of politicians because they wield the vast resources of the state.  Corporations may fall; religious sects may fold up.  But their effects are not as pernicious as the failure of politicians.

When politicians fall, and wield power in a manner diametrically opposed to its avowed purpose, the mayhem it will cause to the people multiplies a thousand fold; it is even exponential.  The people suffer physically and spiritually. With wrong exercise of power, people get hungry and illiterate, and their freedoms curtailed.

By virtue of the command of politicians over the multitude of citizens, they can easily play god over the plight and fate of so many people. The trouble with this is that the more they exercise power, the more they think that they hold the destinies of people, and the more they delude themselves of being gods.

Politicians who go beyond the threshold of powerful leaders to being demigods do with delusions that they are already indestructible, that no opposition can stop their further ascent to power, and of perpetuating their grip over it. This is a psychological threshold that not only wreaks havoc over the nation but over the person himself.

We have witnessed in history men who have deluded themselves to be demigods that they led with seeming impunity. It is history too that proved that as long as these leaders are still made of flesh and bone, they too have to suffer the penalties of their abuse.

Adolf Hitler. Benito Mussolini. Saddam Hussein. Joseph Stalin.  These are international figures that have fallen from the ivory tower of their delusions to the ashes of their destructions.

In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos is too recent in our memory.  He usurped presidential and legislative powers, and ruled with seeming impunity for more than two decades.  He too, like the rest of his breed, had to suffer the humility of defeat and destruction.

Despite the historical lessons, people do not seem to learn, and still insist on threading the path where others have fallen.  Is it human nature to learn things when they experience personally the agony of failure? Or is it just like a child that has to burn his finger to learn that something is really hot which much be avoided?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a well-read person.  She does not hold a graduate degree in economics without a good reading of history.

But despite the historical lessons, she is showing the symptoms of arrogance of power.  Maybe her stay in the palace when her father was then president, and her own nine years stay there has pushed her to a psychological threshold when a leader thinks that whatever she does, nothing can stop her nor could she be held accountable for it.

History has shown that when this psychological threshold is reached, the leader is prone to commit stupendous blunders.  These are blunders which the people could not anymore take, and therefore, they have no option but to punish the leader.

President Arroyo may have to meditate deep and long whether her charter change moves amount to a psychological threshold of arrogance of power.

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.

Trade-offs of a Diaspora

The government, under past and present administrations, has been proud of its deployment of around eleven million Overseas Filipino Workers.  Almost all administrations trumpet this exodus of Filipinos abroad.  Without this deployment, the Philippine economy would have sunk in the pit long ago.

What help us tide over the financial global crises are the remittances of our overseas workers.

This Filipino Diaspora is more of an indictment of how Philippines had been badly governed.  Instead of being proud, any administration should bow its head in recognition of its failure at governance.  There is nothing to be proud about of having to send Filipinos abroad for greener pasture since there may be no pasture to speak about back home.

The foreign currency remittances have been the price tag of the trade-offs these modern day heroes have to endure.  In some countries such as Hong Kong, the word Filipina is synonymous with domestic helper. We have heard of tales of the cruelties our new heroes suffer under foreign employers.   Even foreign governments treated our fellowmen abroad harshly: just recall Flor Contemplacion, and Sarah Balabagan.

These sensational cases involving OFWs are not as destructive as the ill-effects the Diaspora have on the basic social unit of our society – the family.  Cases like those of Contemplacion and Balabagan received the most attention, and the parties involved usually are beneficiaries of the dole-outs of our image conscious politicians.

Suffering silently and without media hype is the Filipino family.

Parents leave small children to the care of relatives so they can work abroad, and earn decent living to support the children, and even the extended family. But parental care has no substitute.  Children of the OFWs suffer the psychological stigma of being left to their own, not to mention the pain they endure as they miss the embrace of their loving parents.

If you have eleven million OFWs, just multiply this with two children – the least a family has considering that the national average is three children per household – you readily have twenty two million children, without one or both parents in the household.  Twenty two million is already a big portion in our eighty million population overall.

The fate these children suffer under the set-up is only one facet of the story.

The marital woes must be taken into account when we speak of the trade-offs.

When both parents work abroad, the children suffer the most. When only one goes abroad, the marital problem multiplies a thousand fold.

The difficult part of working overseas is not the work or adjustment with the new culture.  Filipinos are known to be resilient and hardworking.  These are not issues to them.

Loneliness abroad is gnawing.  We are used to chit-chats, share jokes, and laugh with our neighbors even with the most mundane issue of the fighting spiders.  That we are by nature a cheerful and happy people despite the economic hardships should be conceded.

Being uprooted and thrown into lands where even the fellow-next-door is a stranger contributes largely to the loneliness of our OFWs.

Loneliness and being alone are strong emotions that prod one to seek for a company in a foreign land.  Under these circumstances, marital infidelity is almost unavoidable.

Try to take a census of your friends, relatives, and neighbors, the tales of broken marriages are most common.

I don’t have many friends whose spouses are working abroad.  The numbers do not exceed ten.  Of these few friends, there are four broken marriages.  Of the four friends, two received divorce papers almost at the same time.  One friend who followed his wife in the US was shock to learn the sorry news of his wife’s pregnancy.

Broken marriages and children without one or both parents in their growing-up years, these two are just the right elements for the destruction of the family.

The government should not take pride in sending Filipinos overseas. The trade-off in this Diaspora is the sacrifice of the family in the altar of foreign currencies. We may survive economically the present but we may have unwittingly bargained away the future generations of Filipinos.

Our nation without the strong family as the bedrock is doomed to fail in the long run.  The trade-offs may not be worth the sacrifice at all.

To top it all, we seem not to recognize the real trade-off.

Honoring Tita Cory

Appropriating the prefix “Tita” before Cory does not necessarily connote blood relation. Cory is virtually “Tita” to all Filipinos.  She is part of our respective families.  So when she died last August 1, 2009, a part of us died too.

Cory’s death though does not end her legacy.  Her legacy continues in the hearts of men.  Her body will turn to dust, as we all as heirs of the Original Sin will succumb, but her spirit lives on in us.

She was an icon of democracy and the embodiment of what a true leader should be.

Before Ninoy Aquino died on August 21, 1983, Cory played the perfect role of a wife, and mother. In the glaring lights of national stage, she was just there in the house while her husband took center stage.

The fractious opposition had no leader who could unify the entire nation against the draconian Marcos-led dictatorship.  She would have opted to stay at the back stage but the nation called for her selfless service.

When the survival of the nation depended on her, she did not balk.  Instead of cooking chicken liver pate which was her favorite dish, she was right there in the glare of the limelight, challenging a powerful dictator.

Ferdinand Marcos, with his academic credentials, the military, and all the vast resources of the government at his disposal, arrogantly exclaimed: “A mere housewife will challenge me?”

A housewife indeed challenged a dictator.  But without Marcos knowing it, he was up against a housewife who may not have the physical strength to match his but who had fortitude in spirit that was unbreakable, a spirit that suffered in silence when Ninoy was jailed, and finally, killed. She was at the receiving end of martial law. Pain and suffering, these two make the spirit stronger. If Cory were steel, hers was life borne out of the furnace.

Once she decided to fight, there was no retreat.  She campaigned like hell throughout the countryside. She led the protest actions, prayer rallies, and civil disobedience. She unsheathed the steel of courage when she was cheated in the polls.  She braved with grace the seven coup attempts the once spoiled military staged during her term.

When she took her oath as president at the Club Filipino, her physique was visibly thin.  But the hope and euphoria that swept across the archipelago loomed large above all. In a land desolate for two decades of martial law, Cory and the ideals she represented was the guiding torch of the Filipinos and the world.

At no other moment in history was the Filipino prouder than the magic Cory weaved. For once, we held our heads high and proud to be truly Filipinos.  Cory received spontaneous standing ovations when she spoke before the US Congress. More than that, Cory led a revolution which was emulated in the breaking down of the Berlin wall that divided Germany, and thereafter, in freeing the rest of Eastern Europe in bloodless revolutions.  We bowed our heads when we saw her in the cover of TIME Magazine as the woman of the year.

The celebration of Cory’s life unconsciously, is the celebration of the life of the nation as well.  Subjugated by Spain for 300 years, by Americans for 45 years, and briefly but no less violently by Japan, the Filipinos’ heads were bowed. Cory too, a housewife, suffered under the shadows of paternalistic society that bequeathed to the woman, the household chores.

Cory’s triumph in life is a victory of the dream that the nation has been aspiring: That yes, the Filipino is worth dying for! EDSA I was not only liberation of the nation from dictatorship.  It was also a rebirth of the aspirations of a race that once landscaped our archipelago before the conquistadores arrived in our shores.

She set out to re-establish the democratic institutions that were systematically mangled by then Pres. Marcos. The press breathed the new air of freedom. The Congress ceased to be a rubber stamp.  The Supreme Court regained its lost prestige when Imelda Marcos once made its chief justice her umbrella boy.

Instead of being intoxicated in power, Cory, in her last SONA bid farewell to the people.  She stepped down in office without overtures of clinging to it.

Yet, she knows that the life of the nation did not end in EDSA I; in fact, it was its rebirth.  As the nation marches on, it will be buffeted by winds of corruption, treason and treachery, and the affliction of the weak in spirit – arrogance of power.

Before she died, and even when she was diagnosed with cancer, she urged us to fight these winds.  She was like a Don Quixote.  Now that she is dead, we can only show our gratitude to her by continuing her ideals, which are our nation’s too.

lost cause

THE cost of the guerrilla war the communists have been waging for four decades now is huge in terms of money, lives, and opportunities for development and peace.

How many billions have been spent on either side of the tracks to buy munitions and allied operating costs that go with a war? How many lives of young men and women have been sacrificed in the altar of ideology?

 

The money could have been spent to alleviate the plight of the poor. Bright young minds could have been channeled to nation-building instead of destruction.

Way back in college, when the blood was searing hot with ideals, I cannot count anymore how many mass actions I participated in – Welga Ng Bayan, picket lines, civil disobedience. That age was the time when dying for worthy causes seemed a better option than just being a bystander watching history unfolding.

Yet, for all the ideals, there was not an instance when I entertained the idea of embracing communism. Many student leaders who I knew then were already in the front organizations of the National Democratic Front goaded me to hop into the wagon of rebellion. Ironically though, most of the ideologues did not understand fully well the Marxist thought. What they had were slogans and sound bites.

The sounds never bit me though. Two years of reading the primary works of Karl Marx, Hegel, and even that of Lenin’s and Mao’s led me to conclude that yes, communism needed a leap of faith to hope for a classless society, a utopia, a promise of a Neverland much like religion which Karl Marx described as the opium of the people.

Equality among men can never be attained. What we can hope for is equal opportunities and equal treatment before the law. The latter is already enshrined in the equal protection clause in the bill of rights of our 1987 constitution.

But to hope for a classless society is more faith in content, much akin to the promise of afterlife. Always, there are always men of sterling character who will lead the masses, men gifted with charisma and leadership skills.

They may be men like Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and to be current, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin who still calls the shots in the Russian politburo. You can find these men in the different echelons of society, men who are living witnesses that God did not actually create men as equals. This is a reality which we cannot deny.

Despite the hallow promises of communism, many of my brilliant friends indeed hopped into the wagon, and never to be heard again. There was this editor of Ateneo de Davao, a law student in Xavier University, and before I forgot, my literary editor who surreptitiously inserted in our publication the manifesto of the Kabataan Makabayan.

The burden of brilliance is that you cannot help but dream, and forge a vision of society. To the inquisitive mind, the status quo is always wanting. The tendency is to be non-conformists. During the Marcos regime, the universities were fertile grounds of idealistic and brilliant students who did not need convincing to join the underground movement.

History has unmasked the illusions communism promised. The 90’s saw the collapsed of the iron curtain, and with it the fall of East Berlin, Romania, and other communist regimes. Russia, under Michael Gorbachev, had to invent glasnost and perestroika; China, starting from Deng Xiaoping, opened her doors to the capitalist system.

Otherwise, these once two pillars of communism could not have survived the economic challenges the new millennium poses. [Content-wise, Russia and China are not anymore communist states but socialists with authoritarian rule.]

Yet, the Communist Party of the Philippines still continues to wage the guerrilla war. The tolls are beyond measure. The masses are still burdened with revolutionary taxes. The guns are still firing in the countryside. Even within the rebel movement, purges every now and then saw the excavations of mass graves, of skeletons piled atop the other in the name of an ideology.

And you cannot help but ask, for what cause and towards what end? Why fight to install a communist’s regime that has unmasked its falsity?

History has relegated the pretenses and illusions of communism in the dustbin. What are left now are the detritus of the ideological conflicts of the past century. History as it has unfolded simply cannot make communism a viable alternative. In fact, whenever the adjective “communist” prefixes an ideologue, one wonders what the adjective really means.

Communism is better put for good in the closet, a red-shirt once worn – a social experiment that never proved its hypotheses correct. Why wear the clothing when it has been shown that it does not fit the occasion? Why insist on an ideology that in the vast experiment called life, nothing has been proven right?

It is time for the Communist Party of the Philippines to re-invent itself. Insisting on pursuing a violent struggle is a blind pursuit of political power without a really strong ideological mooring. It is a walk in the dark without knowing where it should end.

Or, shall we ask, what for comrade?

 

Killing the messenger

The statistics are rising.  From the time she assumed office in 2001 up to the present, there has been 64 extra-judicial killing of journalists already.  The Arroyo administration it seems is racing to break the record of Ferdinand Marcos in terms of media people being killed, and of unsolved crimes.

It is easy to understand why many were killed during the Martial Law regime.  To elaborate on the reasons is stating the obvious.  But in an atmosphere of democracy which we as a people regained after the EDSA revolution in 1986, it is difficult to comprehend, must more accept, why the killing of messengers go unabated.

Incomprehensible still is why, despite the many witnesses, we have yet to forever lock in jail the perpetrators. The government cannot turn its eyes away from the assassinations. In the pole of responsibility, the buck stops at the top – the president.

Aside from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Philippines is a dangerous place for journalists to live.  This notoriety of killing the messengers go along with another record of sorts: Philippines is gunning to top the world record in corruption.

Again, record of cronyism and corruption during the Marcos regime, is equaled, if not surpassed, under the Arroyo administration.

If you put the two records together – corruption and extra-judicial killing of journalists – you get to understand the entire picture.  You get to understand why in terms of the notorious records, Ferdinand Marcos has a rival in Gloria Arroyo.

The message is corruption.  In our society, the messenger is the journalist.  The more the message gets ugly the more journalists get killed.

Last November 17, 2008, radio commentator Arecio Padrigao from Gingoog City was gunned down in broad daylight.  His kid witnessed the killing. On January 22, 2009, in Cotabato city, another journalist, Badrodin Abas died of gunshot wound.  Barely a month later, on February 23, 2009, two days before the EDSA revolution anniversary, radio commentator Ernie Rollin  was shot to death in Oroquieta City.  Her lived-in partner Ligaya witnessed the incident.  Ligaya recalled:  “When Ernie was lying already in the ground, the assailant pumped into his head the fatal fourth bullet”. Chilling words.

Aside from their common profession, these journalists were killed when they tackled the common message: corruption.

Where there is rampant corruption, you could hear, read, and see journalists exposing the issue.  That is their function in democracy.  When the three branches of government fail to check each other, the fourth estate, is the last citadel through which the sentiments of the people are crystallized, and calls for reform take shape.

No wonder that the journalist lives a riskier life when corruption gets uglier.

Those hit by the exposes either try to silence the media by filing libel cases, or worse, hire hitmen, to forever mute the media.  But they are darn wrong.

These perpetrators do not read their history, or having read them, fail to grasp the lesson.  The lesson is clear.  You can kill the messenger but you cannot kill the message.

Marcos tried to silence the messengers of truth, freedom and democracy.  Ninoy Aquino was jailed, and having failed to silence him, he was assassinated. Evelio Javier died in the assailant’s hands. Lean Alejandro who championed the student’s rights was also killed. Marcos had tried all the menus to silence the people.  Yet, when the messengers died, the message was carried on not my individuals, but by the Filipinos as a race. The rest was history.

You kill Padrigao, Abas, Rollin and other journalists, but as long as the message remains, someone else will take the cudgel and expose the truth.  Listen to the successor of Ernie Rollin in his program in DxSY-AM. “You have killed Ernie, but you have to kill me too because I will continue exposing corruption in the government.”  These are words of anguish and at the same defiance of human tragedy if only to proclaim the truth.

The perpetrators have not learned another lesson in our recent history: you kill media men, and like sticks forming a broom, they unite, and their exposes more intense and daring.

You do not kill media men.  That is a wrong route.  Get your act together. Get rid of corruption. Imprison Garci, Jocjoc Volante, and Jose Pidal.  If there is no message of corruption, there is no need to kill the messenger because there will be none in the first place.  

Forgetting

There are medical terms for the word: Alzheimer, senility, amnesia. The medical equivalent for the word simply means a disease involving forgetfulness, the inability to recall even recent past events.  People who suffer the disease live in the here and now.

We seemed to be a nation short of memory.  Most of us have been part of the EDSA revolution in 1986.  Our roles may have differed. For sure, that event could not be easily obliterated considering that it was the people’s victory of unshackling from the Marcos dictatorship.  It was the first peaceful revolution that toppled a dictator, a historic event which was later on replicated in Germany, in Rome, and in other former communist’s regimes in Eastern Europe.

It was supposed to be the finest hour in our history.  Yet, we forget.

Just after three presidents – Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Erap Estrada – we again sulk in the corners and allow Gloria Arroyo to exercise emergency powers to smother her political foes, let General Palparan conduct extra-judicial killings, tolerate the PGMA cronies, notably the First Gentleman, to pillage our economy, and ratify the Anti-terrorism law which violates the fundamental freedom of liberty provided for in our charter.

The 1987 Constitution tried to exorcise and clip the draconian powers of the executive.  However, exorcism cannot be done in the books.  The charter is only the tool.  The people ultimately should wield the powers.

Yet we do not wield. We simply forget.

Before the senate, scams after scams have been investigated. The fertilizer scam, hello Garci tapes, the ZTE $300 million overpriced-contract, ad infinitum.  But where is Jocjoc Volante, Commissioners Garcillano and Abalos, and Jose Pidal now?  Instead of prison, they are just there in the golf courses, plotting for more scams.

Where is our initial howl of protest?  We simply forget.

More than a year ago, a law student from Xavier University, Tamtam Edpan was mercilessly killed.  Until now, the assailants are unknown.  Last year, and last month, our city was flooded, and during the calamity, the airwaves were shut with calls for saving the forest, and stop logging and mining in the watershed areas.  Last December, a civilian, Roberto Martinez was murdered, and Police Chief Genabe, even when the corpus delicti was found, refused to investigate because no one complained. We puked at the shallowest of excuse the police chief offered.

But easily, we forget.

Even as the proposed bio-ethanol plant in our watershed areas in barangays Mambuaya and Bayanga, was heavily criticized just last week, the issue is dying a natural death, and one day, we will wake up, with the ever present danger of cyanide contamination in our faucets.

Perhaps, our collective memory is bound to be short-lived. The Spaniards and Americans erased our common history, and cannibalized whatever national identity we had.  We are a smorgasbord of many cultures that ultimately, we are left with none.  We are little brown Americans but not quite.  Others ape the Spanish Dons but ended up being indolent.

The native culture which predated the coming of Spain and later by the Americans was supplanted by things foreign.  Even our history is written in the prism of two Americans – Blair and Robertson.

As a nation, we tend to forget easily the scams and scandals, and even the lessons we learned at Edsa.  Forgetting all things good and bad would lead us to nowhere.  If we have to move forward, we should learn from the lessons of the past.  Otherwise, we will be perpetually in the starting line.

The soul of a nation lies in the common history that we associate with and embrace together as our own, individually and collectively.  Our collective history is what makes us one nation.

As a person, what make us distinct would be our memory, a stream of consciousness from the past, present, and the projection of the future.  As a nation, have to remember our common suffering and our shared triumphs.  If we easily forget recent events, we cannot expect a recollection of the past.  Without this recollection, we are a group of people but not a nation. 

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.

vignettes in the mind

These days, the topics I want to blog about are racing in my mind, each wanting to find expression ahead of the others. Instead of writing one topic, let me outline the sketches.

Of Palawan

1. Last week, I accompanied my daughter to Palawan, an island province in the Philippines. She was playing lawn tennis in the national games. I promised her that if she would win the regional eliminations, I would be her coach in the national tourney. She did not make it to the top spot, but for a girl who sidelines in tennis aside , placing fourth is a feat already.

2. The moment I set foot in Puerto Princesa, the capital city of Palawan, I immediately realize that there is hope for the Philippines. Puerto Princesa is the cleanest and greenest city in our country for almost a decade now. The place is so clean that any visitor would be ashamed to litter it with cigarette butts, candy wrappers, sticks, or any form of garbage. The residents’ concern for cleanliness was so infectious that we visitors from other regions - who think the entire Philippines is a big trash can - had to keep our garbage until we found the garbage bin.

3. I left my cell phone in a motor vehicle (known as tricycle). After almost an hour while in the tennis court, the driver approached me and handed back my phone. I asked a friend who is the chief of the intelligence agency there about the crime rate. He said it is the lowest in the Philippines. This is one low statistics that we should be proud about.

4. Palawan was threatened with poachers, loggers, fishpond operators that destroy the mangroves, illegal conversion of farmlands. But since 1994, when Mayor Edward Hagedorn was elected, he drove away the illegal loggers, poachers, and illegal fishponds. He summoned the help of his province mates. Political power has been wielded for the common good, and now, even if the mayor would not be around anymore, people power will ensure that the rich bio-diversity of the entire province is protected.

5. The animals and fishes are not afraid of humans. We make them afraid of us. In one island, I went snorkelling. I panicked because I was suddenly surrounded with school of fishes that I thought I would be attacked. I immediately went ashore and told our guide of the incident. He just who just laughed. The fishes are not afraid of humans.

6. I spent the last few hours in Palawan swimming in a white beach facing the South China Sea. I could have stayed my entire life in the fresh, unpolluted, pristine beach. But the reality of life beckons me to pack my bag, back home.

7. I have always kept my principle of making friends instead of enemies. Years back, I came to know of a major in the military. He was promoted to colonel and went on to head the military agency in Palawan . I texted here that I was already in his AOR. I thought with his promotion he forgot our friendship. But to my surprise, he was so glad to be my host that he treated me almost nightly, and facilitated all our local tours with virtually no cost to us. Bridges once built should always be kept.

Of rice shortage

1. Early dawn this morning, I sped fast to the wharf bound for Camiguin Island, another tourist destination, this time not for a rest but for a court hearing. In the wharf, I was greeted with the presence of military men who are advance security of President Arroyo who would visit the island tomorrow. In the wharf, there was this big billboard saying that there is abundance of rice and President Arroyo is the instrument.

2. With still alcohol in my system, I almost puked upon reading the billboard. How can there be abundance of rice when the people have to line-up to buy rice? When the Philippines is the number one importer of rice? When by July, the price of rice is expected to skyrocket to P50/kilo or US$1.25?

3. President Arroyo indeed is the instrument, not of rice abundance but of the crisis. In the May 2004 election, almost ONE BILLION PESOS intended for fertilizers could not be accounted for. Jocjoc Volante who is the pawn used by President Arroyo siphoned off the money to fund the presidential campaign, Until now, Jocjoc Volante has not been charged with a crime.

4. I always believed in karma. Whatever you do, something will be done to you in return. You convert the rice fields into subdivisions, you lose the source of rice production. In Palawan, there is this penal colony known as Iwahig Penal Farm. 32,000,00 hectares of agricultural lands are being tilled by prisoners every day. Can you imagine how many sacks of rice you lose if you turn these farms into subdivisions? Can you eat your housing units? Without house, you still live. Without food, you cannot outlast the fasting of Jesus Christ.

5. Bio-diesel is welcome. But we have to re-think our strategies. If you convert rice fields into cassava farms, then you substitute rice for fuel. Don’t tell me you would opt to fuel your car than to fuel your body with food.

Of parenting

1. I have to play catch-up with my work due to the one week that I had to spend coaching my daughter. But catch-up I must. The work can wait but for my daughter and for my other kids as well, every minute lost showing your love, is an opportunity lost forever. If you miss the opportunity now, someday, it will haunt you with problematic kids, children whose lives you cannot understand anymore.

2. A friend asked me why I have to spend training my three kids in tennis when in the Philippines there is no monetary reward for tennisters. I have been a sportsman all my life. Name a game that is played in the Philippines, and I have played it. As a kid, my parents did not push us to study. They guided our studies but there was no stick. We were allowed to play the games we wanted. And in those games I played, I learned a lot about people, team work, discipline, reaching a goal, sacrifice, pain. Winning is sweet but the road is bitter. Name any human experience , it is played in the games already. I don’t expect my children to be a Federer or a Sharapova, but I do not wish to be an obstacle of the possibilities that they may become.

3. I bond with my kids more in tennis. I play tennis a lot. With the game, we talk about the power serve, tops spin, slice. We watch tennis games in TV and in real life. We play with each other or against each other. After all, any sport is not mere statistics. The human drama is just like any drama outside of the tennis court. Tennis imitates life, or is it the other way around?