A tale of two cultures
EASILY the most moving story on human suffering from biblical times to the present is the story of Job. The depth of his sorrows and the magnitude of tempests and severity of tests that visited his life, all the while holding on to the proposition that divine intervention will be the final chapter of his terrible fate, are, definitely, beyond human forbearance. If there were mutterings of “Why God” in the midst of Job’s personal storms, he mostly kept these to his suffering self.
There was apparently nothing that he would not bear, there was no cross too heavy, in the name of his faith. Job faithfully and desperately clung to forthcoming redemption after torrents of punishments. Unlike the modern-day version of “Christianity” preached by TV evangelists cum prosperity preachers that regard the Gospel as some sort of textbook guide and pathway to riches and success.
Philippine society has a temporal version of Job’s forbearance. It is former senator Leila de Lima’s unwavering faith that the judicial system that she was once part of would soon deliver the justice due her. Truth would clear through the fog of lies and trumped-up charges that led to her long detention. Scripted testimonies would be recanted, made-up accusations would unravel, and those who plotted and conspired to cause her long and unjust incarceration would be exposed. The vehement, vengeful justice system that was manipulated to ruin her life will be the same system that would fully set her free.
The part about recanted testimonies has taken place, the guilt-stricken accusers telling the court that the former senator was at the center of an orchestrated frame-up, that they signed testimonies against her under duress, and now it was time to retract the falsehood.
As the Bard says, all lies end up badly and the lies in the case of de Lima will all end up badly and torn to shreds. Perhaps, a day of reckoning would also come to those who manipulated her arrest, detention and suffering.
Her six years of detention have taken a grievous toll on the former senator. A full Senate term that she would have devoted to legislation for those who needed protection of the law most was spent behind bars. The detention snuffed out any decent chance of getting reelected for a second term. She was the target of desperate hostagetakers. Her Covid diagnosis was a result of her exposure to countless court hearings, being shuttled from court to jail like a common criminal.
Nothing, it seems, can break her. Not the claustrophobic confines of her detention area. Not the calumny from the trolls. Not the indifferent institutions that have written her off. Not the clear backsliding of the same institutions from the rule of law. Not the apathy of a nation that has seemingly forgotten her. Not the selfproclaimed banner carriers of equity and justice who turned a blind eye to the travesty of justice in her particular case.
And one wonders. Where does she get the fortitude to carry on? From what unfathomable wellspring of hope does she draw the will to move forward and keep her faith in the justice system that failed and framed her?
The epic equanimity of her disposition under detention, in case you have failed to notice this, is in direct contrast to tantrums of her once-jailer Gerald Bantag, who was recently charged with masterminding the killing of broadcaster and vlogger Percy Lapid.
Early reaction of Mr. Bantag, with charges yet to be filed and his alleged masterminding of
Lapid’s murder still confined to media reports, was to vow that he would rather die fighting for his freedom than serve a jail term. What was about being in jail that this suspended head of the Bureau of Corrections was terribly afraid of? What was in the mindset of a potential prisoner that rang the alarm bells in Mr. Bantag?
OK, was he not a man of the law?
Would the fiefdom that he once presided over not vest him with rudimentary deference due a former head of the system in case of a conviction? Or, is Mr. Bantag familiar with a system with a dark underbelly and a sinister, cannibalistic population? Perhaps the latter, based on his word to rather face death than serve a prison sentence? Wait, wait. There is no trial and finding of guilt yet. What drives the theatrical alarums?
Post the filing of the murder raps, Mr. Bantag now pleads innocence, naming a prisoner serving a drug-related crime as the real brains. Without evidence, or without a chronology of facts and events that would tie up that imprisoned drug convict to the murder of broadcaster Lapid, Mr. Bantag’s profession of utter innocence came as too hollow and improbable. The new chief of the Bureau of Corrections said the penal system has imploded. Unclaimed cadavers of former prisoners, some rotten, have piled up in a funeral parlor. Smuggling of prohibited items into the national penitentiary is a way of life. In the telling of former general Gregorio Catapang Jr., who now heads the bureau, the National Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City is a virtual hell hole.
The family of the murdered Lapid said if Mr. Bantag were really innocent, he would have come clean and prove his innocence in court. The advice of the family, which should be heeded by the former top jailer, is “surrender and face the music.” The unwritten message is this: Mr. Bantag, enough of the tantrums and the hysterics. A man of the law yourself, trust the law to take its due course.
In the detention of former senator Leila de Lima and in the murder charges filed against Mr. Bantag, two cultures are all too clear. The first respects the law despite the law being hard. The other despises and mocks the law when the law does not do his bidding.
And from these two cultures, two questions are worth asking: What kind of environment shaped the fortitude of Miss de Lima and her fealty to the law? And Mr. Bantag’s theatrics and little regard for it?
What made the former senator the example of the modernday Job and Mr. Bantag one of those unrestrained, fire-andbrimstone characters in the Old Testament?