“Time doesn’t cancel sin, “ the British writer, scholar and theologian C. S. Lewis wrote. Lewis debunked an emergent idea in the 16th and 17th centuries that time heals –still does–all wounds, like sin.
The morning after the country’s notorious villain unabashedly, shamelessly uttered his mea culpa in the now infamous Senate hearing, it’s easy to agree with another of his pround quotes that “ of all tyrannies, the one that is sincerely exercised for the good of its victims can be the most oppressive.
It came from the horse’s mouth himself. He did it, a bizarre,strange version of 9/11 in the Philippines in the war on drugs in that it claimed the lives of from 6,000 to 20,000 people. For the good of the people and the country ,except that the known terrorist is the highest official of the land.
From a coterie of comedic genius, softballs throwers and those that bit their tounges—never mind those who made themselves scarce–, their malignant suggestion is like- minded. There’s such a legal thing as prescription period when a criminal can no longer be made culpable for the crime.
There is jurisprudence, and there are precedents to invoke. A decade-long case of unexplained wealth of the former dictator and/or his family was dismissed because there are no more witness around after such a long time.
A former defense, who once cried wolf and later on denied there was an ambush, walked away free from a pork barrel legal case because of old age. A former first lady was sentenced to jail by the Highest Court but later on gave in, if not up, to age. Age isn’t just a number; it’s also a legal defense.
Besides, it’s been a long time, most, if not,all the victims of what is now known as the template of the death squad are six feet below the ground. So what’s the fuzz? Shit happened and leaving the tragedy to time may be the best or most practical solution.
Except that there are the survivors and families of thousands of extrajudicial killing *(EJK ) victims who can can’t look back at the past with nostalgia but with fear and trembling. There is a continuing threat that hangs like the sword of Damocles, or aptly, Duterte. Now is the best opportunity for justice.
Unfortunately, their best source of hope in getting justice the victims deserved, even belatedly, is compromised or encumbered. In short, his hands are tied. First off, there was the unspoken agreement to allow the burial of the former dictator in the hallowed ground for heroes,
Second off, there was the shotgun political marriage. It is now known why it happened. The senator sister of the current president begged the vice president to join them because the brother was still an endangered political specie. The only way to beat the opponent, a woman and a certified political yellow, is to be united with the only son of former dictator.
After all has been said and done, not all has been said and done, after all. The latest word, or political blackmail, from the vice president, was conveyed to the sister-senator. If this administration, she warned, will not stop badmouthing her family, she will do the unthinkable or unimaginable: she would exhume the body of the late dictator from the heroes’ cemetery and dump it in the West Philippine Sea.
It was the most ambitious burial plan ever disclosed by a politician for another politician , more historical in just one sense. How she plans to execute it beggars the imagination. Once upon a time, her father , who turned up to be another tyrant, vowed to ride a jet ski and confront an invasive hegemon in the WPS but gave up the idea. The daughter may not be as fickle-minded to drop her idea. She once dropped a sheriff to his knees with a wicked hook.
The sister senator has yet to recover from the vice president’s political hook of some kind. She used to be as protective and defensive of her like a caregiver. When the president was recently asked by media about the vice president’s sinister plan, the president requested that they talk about it in the future.
May be. May be not. Maybe this is not the right time. Maybe the right time will come. The pain is still there, no doubt.
The fact that the vice president, who helped you win the president at one time, imagined to have your head dismembered from your body is more weird than fiction. That’s why many across the board implied insanity. It also not a good political joke by any standard even ,if, or specially so, in the context of a father and former president known for making jokes and leaving thousands in mortal grief.
There’s the rub.
A bad political story will find it hard to have a happy closure. The overthrow of a dictator in 1986 through a peaceful people revolution did not have one, even if the son came back and regained power, has since been thrown to the backburner by running it out of the list of national holidays. It ,obviously, is not an endearing one to the victors, given the political exertions to rewrite the whole nine yards and relive their fables.
The vice president’s unprecedented gall or nerve to publicly say what she wanted to do to a former president and, essentially, dishonor him is unthinkable. The siblings, the president and senator’s restrained silence about it, let alone the rest of the family’s but one, speak volumes about the difficulty of their story’s closure.
Their vulnerability is palpable.
The German philosopher said the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only during the dusk, one , therefore, can only appreciate history as it happens or by hindsight. David Brooks, an American columnist, describes this as a perpetual tragedy.
This probably explains the Marcoses silence and restraint. For now.
