Being kind to criminals and blind to the real victims
of a better way to be worthy of your friendship the right way.
*** I was fortunate to travel with the former President and now Congresswoman Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo in seeking medical help to alleviate her pain in her neck which has been going on for years. I have been with this magnificent lady for years serving under her watch for nine years and I cannot help but still admire her dignity and composure in dealing with her prolonged illness after unjust detention. Though unjustly pilloried and held hostage to a family’s vindictiveness, partially serving a sentence without conviction, suffering detention in a 100- square meter room for almost five years, with very restrictive visiting hours, was wrongfully denied access to the outside world without a cellphone, computer and media interviews, the agony of being denied access for better treatment, obliged to foot the bills of her security entourage whenever granted occasional furloughs for being with her family during holidays and interments of immediate relatives, bearing the shame of stories published about her, with each tagged in the end with “she is now presently detained at VMMC being accused of plunder in the PCSO case.” She has been ridiculed by the yellow army as if to push her to take her own life and end it all, and with her family and friends receiving all kinds of imagined suits, including her chief justice being unseated. Yet she chose to face the courts to defend herself, and now freed, decided to adhere to proper procedures and due process for her persecutors who are now currently being investigated. Elegance of character is a strength that is rare to find these days.
*** The UN rapporteur for human rights and other similar international representatives should not take a jaundiced look at our war on drugs. One foreign correspondent parachuted into the country a month ago and selectively featured the family of the “victims” of the government’s anti- drug campaign, although there were admissions that those victims were drug users. He did not even bother to get the side of the family of the grandfather who was hammered to death by his grandson, a girl gang- raped and murdered in a subdivision, and the tales of the families of the policemen shot dead during encounters. Clearly, there was an objective in his mission. He was blind to the bigger numbers affected by the drug menace. He could have interviewed both sides, including that of the law enforcement, but this was not done and he insinuated in the end that “foul play” is always the cause of the deaths, “dramatized” those reports with tears of grief and anguish. Such rush and incom- plete data definitely neglected the human rights of the real victims of this menace in our society. Surely this is not fairness in the world of journalism.
*** The administration of PRRD is correct in advancing an independent foreign policy. We can be a superpower’s ally, but we must not be treated as its lapdog or puppet. We have been projected for years as democracy’s poster boy in this part of the world, but we sure failed to be seen as such in their radar screen, lagging behind in receiving the grace that is accorded our previous common enemy, Japan. Right after WWII, the Americans spent an enormous amount of money to rehabili- tate the conquered Empire of the Rising Sun, while they left us with chocolates and Spam to tidy up our nation’s contribution to their victory in the war, not to mention the fact that it took them decades to officially recognize our war veterans and made our land their dumping ground for surpluses of outdated war materiel. And we were expected to respond with grateful cheer and standing ovation.
*** “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” - Albert Einstein
*** Good work, good deeds and good faith to all.