The tantalizing notion that a free Leila de Lima will turbocharge the political opposition may be too much . Although it’s still on the realm of possibility , she’s nonetheless shaping reality or perception. People may start liking the chances that the future will be better than good. After all, her freedom, although not yet full, already rises to the level not just of individual but collective thanksgiving. The former senator is free and it is a shared one.
Truth, indeed, can set people free or run away with wild imagination. . The more truth is told or shared, the more it changes people’s lives. Community is best defined in that sense. 0r nationhood. Seven more prisoners are telling the nation and the whole world they told lies about the senator because they were told so under duress.It will encourage others to tell the truth about other things. Who knows how much, indeed, we don’t know?
Leila de Lima, former senator and former secretary of justice, thrown behind bars for nearly seven years on the strength of lies has already made a huge difference in people’s lives, not just
some prisoners’s, and she’s just starting. She’s got a long way to go.
“In a time of deceit,” George Orwell wrote, “ telling the truth can be a revolutionary act.
But first things first. De Lima has to seek justice first, a time of reckoning for those who started those lies that built that prison. There is a former president and a former justice secretary who should be made accountable. There is a bigger truth out there that need to be told. It concerns the lives of more than 30,000 or affects more 100 million. There is a crime against humanity crying out to be exposed. She has said she will help in ferreting out the truth.
And people are becoming braver. There’s a changing tune. Some lawmakers want a resolution passed allowing the International Criminal Court to pursue an investigation of a former president who was also behind the lies that then imprisoned a former senator. There are hints the ICC may,after all, be allowed to do its job. The former senator may be able to make the difference. The government categorically said so.
There was a time when a former president led her fellow politicians in calling to ban the ICC. Power can be tricky and illusory. The former president has no longer the former power and influence she used to yield over other power-seekers. The order has been changed, albeit even reversed. The call of the times may no longer be the same. The call for truth rather than lies is more resonant than before.
De Lima feels it. On social media, she’s egged on to pursue the enablers of lies in the corridors of power. There’s an election coming in 2025. It’s an opportunity for truth to be told, not just for personal but collective reason. The nation needs to know and make up its mind about a certain future built around the truth. It’s not just about politics but about justice and the truth that can set people free.
“When I despair,’ said Mahatma Gandhi,” I remember that all through history the way of truth and love had always won. There have been tyrant and murderers and for a time they can be invincible but in the end they always fall.” “They always will”, he said
But first thing first. De Lima must be reminded, constantly, of the half-naked fakir who understood the truth and lived it. Justice must come first. Right now, there are distractions on the horizon. She may well be as well thinking of being a presidential timber in the future, maybe 2028. It can be misleading,tempting. Politics is never a precedence before justice.
She’s on the right side of history, although some self-serving political braggadocios seem to show otherwise. There is a need to root out evil in the society,and the opportunity has come. People are braver now. Who knows what’s in store for those who seek to overthrow the source of injustice?
It’s one step at a time. Those who hurry, one wise man said, are mere amateurs. This is no time for amateurs or amateurish. Put the advocate of lies out of the way first. Who knows others liars will fall in the right place?
Right now, the nation’s political plate is cluttered. There is the issue of alleged cheating in the last presidential election. People don’t seem to care anymore. Life is hard, although surveys show less people are hungry for food. Maybe it’s not about the promised P20 per kilo of rice, re-creating an myth that life was once the golden age in the time of autumn of the dictator. Something is more important than food.
There’s a slow invasion getting closer to the shore but a joint patrol with an old ally is seen to stymie, if not stop, a new enemy bent on imposing a self-serving myth of a line that only exists in the Marxist mind. There is subtle revision of history and people are drawn to it. The judiciary is, at long last, independent or so it seems. Carpe diem. The former senator is free, after all, and free to seek justice against those who oppressed her and others.
The plain thing is the main thing or vice versa, and former senator De Lima must not be tempted to bite the wrong fruit. It happened before, and we all regret it. There is redemption in making the right choice or idea. It’s a game- changer.
