Theres The Rub
Remember him?
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:38:00 04/08/2008
I said this last Feb. 21 in a column titled, “Resident evil”:
“I don’t know what’s going to happen over the next few days or weeks, but I do know one thing: The people who are responsible for this evil get away with it again, then heaven help Jun Lozada. One is tempted to say heaven help Romy Neri as well, but why should heaven help those who will not help themselves? They get away with this again, and Lozada’s sacrifice will not only have gone in vain—and what a sacrifice it is, one that a few of us will ever be able to make in 10 lifetimes—it will add macabre dimensions to the adage that no good deed ever goes unpunished. These people get away with this again, and we will have delivered Lozada to the scaffold.”
That’s what seems to be happening today. With the Supreme Court agreeing that Neri may not divulge his conversations with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on the national broadband network (NBN) project on grounds that that is privileged ladies’ talk (the Court’s official justification, which is even more idiotic than that interpretation, is respect for the separation of powers), the Senate hearings have ground to a halt and the forces of evil have been unleashed once more. And threaten to crush Lozada in their wake.
The demolition job on him, which was already in full swing since he turned into star witness at the Senate hearing, has been raised several notches higher. It’s not just in the court of law (as Orwellian a label as you can get in describing the courts of this country) that Arroyo’s minions are prosecuting their case against Lozada, it’s now also in the court of public opinion. Iggy Arroyo’s remarks are typical. “All we’ve heard so far,” he said, emboldened enough to sneer at the Senate hearings, “are the showbiz acting and tears of Lozada and his evidence-less allegations as well as those of Jose de Venecia and other supposed whistleblowers.”
One is tempted to marvel at the cheekiness of people who insist there is no evidence of Arroyo’s wrongdoing in the face of the most blatant efforts by government to stamp out evidence—what else is the Supreme Court ruling but that? These people not quite incidentally include the corrupt bishops who keep reciting the mantra, “No evidence, no evidence, no evidence” when right before their eyes the CSI is busy removing evidence. But suffice it to marvel at the cheekiness of the once self-proclaimed Jose Pidal to suggest a capacity to pontificate on anything remotely related to the truth.
I do not particularly care about the De Venecias and the other whistleblowers whose motives are not beyond question. But I do care about Lozada. I do have friends who have asked me if I did not think Lozada had gotten too big for his breeches, hobnobbing with Cory Aquino and company and making it a point to be seen in rallies and forums. My answer is: Not at all. Why on earth should he not try to take a high profile when his health or wellbeing depends on his taking a high profile? Indeed, why shouldn’t he take every effort to end this evil when the end of this evil is the only way he can begin life anew? For crying out loud, the guy has sacrificed everything, living the life of a virtual fugitive, fearing for his life and those of his loved ones, wondering what future lies in store for his kids. How many of us can do that, even in 10 lifetimes?
I’ve never entertained the thought that he was the purest man in the world. He’s flawed, as he himself has admitted several times. But completely unlike Jose de Venecia, he is one man who has sinned and made amends for his sins. And completely unlike Chavit Singson, he told the truth when he had every reason not to. Chavit blurted out on his erstwhile pal, Joseph Estrada, because he had no choice: If he did not, they would probably end up killing him, which they had already tried (at least in his mind). Lozada blew the whistle on his former boss even though he had a choice: If he did not, they would definitely not just let him live but reward him handsomely, like Neri.
Chavit told the truth because that was the only way he could live. Lozada told the truth because that was the only way he could live—with himself. Those are two very different things. If the latter isn’t heroism, I don’t know what is.
More than any political figure in recent years, it’s Lozada who has revived the proposition that in a democracy one man can make a difference. He it is who has, at the cost of turning himself and his family into exiles in their own land, stood up against oppression and spoke his truth, hoping that truth would be the potion that roused his countrymen from their deathly stupor. More than any religious figure in recent years, it’s Lozada who has given new life to the Biblical injunction that the truth shall set you free. He it is who at the cost of causing his wife nerves and his kids to face a future full of cloudiness and uncertainty—and while many bishops were busy calling for discernment to discern their own advanced state of decomposition—liberated himself with his truth, hoping that for others as well that truth would be as Joshua’s trumpets sending the walls of Jericho crashing down.
The only thing that’s worse than seeing the guilty thrive is seeing the innocent suffer. And the only thing that’s worse than that is seeing both at the same time—evil rewarded richly and the good punished harshly. We allow this to happen and we will not just consign Lozada to the gallows, we will consign all that is decent and good and honest to the gallows. We allow this to happen and will not just consign Lozada to the gallows, we will consign ourselves to the gallows.
We allow this to happen, and we won’t have a future, we won’t even have a past or present. We allow this to happen and we won’t have to wonder if we’ll ever survive, we’ll already be dead.
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