Those whom the gods wish to destroy….
For those of you who still believe in Pres. P-Noy Aquino III’s pushing for the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) which is the result of the signing of the Peace Agreement between the Philippine Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), I dare ask you, especially those Taipans who belong to the Makati Business Club that own and operate commercial or rural banks whether you would agree to give a loan to any person in the millions of pesos and that person would sign the contract using a fictitious or fake name? I’m sure you wouldn’t!
Even those of us who are considered Gold Card holders in our respective banks have to annually sign new signatures from the same banks that we use just to make sure that we are one and the same person who made the loan or opened up a savings account. Yet during the Congressional hearing in the Mamasapano massacre, Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Leila de Lima said of Mohagher Iqbal,
“I do not think his use of alias will cause any problem. His use of a nom de guerre can also be considered an exception in favor of the MILF or with the National Democratic Front (NDF) and other organizations with which we have had peace negotiations in the past. I think some of them if
not most of them also used nom de guerre.” Madre Mia! After trying to sell us that yarn that there is no “Chain of Command,” the DOJ Secretary now says that it is okay to sign a very important document such as a peace accord using an alias? Wow!
This reminds me of that famous ancient quotation which is attributed to a Greek playwright Euripides (though no one is really sure that Euripides said this) who said, “Those the gods would destroy, he first makes
mad!” This quotation is one way of saying that when a leader behaves in a very strange or crazy manner, that madman is doomed to destruction! Sec. De Lima is trying to make fools of all Filipinos when she said that there was no “chain of command” and the use of aliases by the MILF is acceptable. This issue brings me back to the article of fellow
STAR columnist Marichu Villanueva who wrote on Feb. 26, 2002 that Pres. Joseph “Erap” Estrada finally admitted that he signed the name Jose Velarde for his secret bank account of P500 million at the EquitablePCI Bank. This was one of the telling evidences that showed corruption. How could he have amassed a P500 million fortune?
It is for this very reason why I was very disappointed at then Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for giving Erap a complete pardon, for he was the biggest fish that was caught and yet he got away scot-free because the political elite would take care of their own!
Yet, despite the revelation of Ben-Hur Luy in the Janet Lim Napoles (remember her?) case, there are 20 Senators and a hundred Congressmen involved in that money-making scam using fake NGOs, yet only three Senators are being incarcerated. Could it be that because now that the DOJ Secretary allows the use of aliases, then one can now claim that the use of fake NGOs is also okay? Madam Secretary… we are not all mad here!
Then last April 9 during the ceremonies in Mt. Samat for the Araw ng Kagitingan, P-Noy made another pitch for the BBL, saying that former enemies can become partners. Clearly the President was trying to put some parallels between Japan, who fought the United States and occupied the Philippines for nearly four years in one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts in the Pacific Theater of World War II and the Muslim separatist terrorism in Mindanao, which is to say the least… so far fetched!
Mind you, I lost my maternal grandfather Capt. Valeriano Jamala Segura in Bataan. But while I may agree with the President that someday we would have peace in Mindanao, but all this takes time because time after all is the greatest of healers! World War II ended 70 years ago and that is more than enough time to heal the wounds of war.
But that’s where the comparison ends. Today the Mamasapano massacre is barely two-and-a-half -month old and the wounds of the soldier who wasn’t killed with the 44 fallen SAF are only beginning to heal. But since the truth of what happened in Mamasapano has not-been-so-cleverly-hidden from the families of the dead troopers thanks to that massive cover-up by Malacañang, I don’t think they are helping in the healing process.
Anyway back to the parallelism that P-Noy was trying to put during the Araw ng Kagitingan rites… it is most unfortunate that the President failed to mention that after the war was over, Japan had to pay reparations to the Philippines. This is opposite to the BBL because it is we Filipinos who would pay for the P70 billion that would be given to the MILF if and when the BBL is signed. Why don’t we turn the tables back to the MILF and ask them to give the Philippines P70 billion in reparations for preventing the economic growth of Mindanao because of their armed conflict? Touché!
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