Someone asked me last week how I thought Jun Lozada?s case would go. I said it all depended on how Manny Pacquiao?s fight would go.

Everybody laughed. But I wasn?t being altogether facetious. The timing of Lozada?s arrest is curious. It happened last Wednesday, just days before Pacman?s fight. I myself had expected it to happen Thursday, Friday being Labor Day, a holiday. Tyrannical regimes love Fridays, and normally pick the evenings of that day to wreak atrocity. The logic being to prevent angry rallies and demonstrations from greeting it. It?s harder mounting rallies and demonstrations on weekends and holidays when a bedraggled citizenry prefers to stay home and watch movie stars sing?and Pacquiao fight.

I suspect they did it on Wednesday to see if it would provoke that kind of reaction from the populace the next day. Friday would be sure to put the brakes on it. And Sunday would be surer to drown it completely. If Pacquiao won his fight, the universal euphoria would trample everything in its path, first in line being the bummers or downers or bad news. If Pacquiao lost, the universal weeping and gnashing of teeth would leave a dampening fog so thick it would mute other sounds of discord. But it would also probably leave some room for commiseration by the principle of misery loving company.

Well, Lozada?s arrest wasn?t greeted with marches and demonstrations last Thursday. Which augurs very darkly for us. We?ve just gotten TKO?d, except that we don?t know it yet.

I?ve said it before: You don?t have to like Jun Lozada to be alarmed and angry at the way he is being harassed and persecuted. I?ve heard people, including some friends, complain that he calls attention to himself a little too much. Well, even if true, what of it? I still challenge people to see if they can ever do what he did in this life or the next. If they can turn their backs on fortune (this regime has been known to liberally reward the tractable and rotten) and risk life and limb (this regime has been known to implacably hound the unyielding and decent) just to be able to say his piece. If they can put their spouses and kids on the line, compelling them to live the life of refugees in their own land, opening them up to threats and deprivation, because conscience knocked so loudly it couldn?t be ignored anymore.

I know I?d be hard put to do it. Jun Lozada is being pa-martir? Well, we can do with more Filipinos being pa-martir. Or since we already have a surfeit of martyrs, with more Filipinos fighting back and stopping the lie. By rising up and stopping the madness.

We let Lozada?s plight be drowned out by euphoria, or worse by indifference, and we drown ourselves in oppression, or worse in masochism. You don?t have to like Lozada to quake with wrath at what they?re doing to him. You only have to like yourself. Because this case is not just about Lozada, it is about you. This persecution is not just the persecution of Lozada, it is the persecution of you. This spectacle is not just what Lozada has been reduced to, it is what you have been reduced to.

What are the implications of this wretched iniquity?

The grotesque Raul Gonzalez says Lozada is just pa-martir since he can always make bail and be instantly free. Not at all. If Lozada makes bail, he will never be free. Not in the way freedom fighters have always construed freedom, not in the way free men have always experienced freedom. In that respect, I salute Lozada for not posting bail at all. That was what I said, too, when Archbishop Oscar Cruz was issued a warrant of arrest for libel by Pagcor: I wished he would not post bail, I wished he would spend time in jail till they retracted the accusation. Cruz posted bail instead.

The point is simple: Lozada agrees to post bail and he?s already lost. Lozada agrees to post bail and this country has already lost. It is to admit the possibility?one GMA?s courts will eventually decree as fact, the way Marcos? courts once did?not just that he is a liar but that Mike Defensor is capable of telling the truth. It is to accept the premise that GMA?s courts are actually in a position to determine the truth about his kidnapping, the truth about GMA?s non-involvement in the NBN (the Supreme Court already upheld ?executive privilege?), the truth about their ability to handle the truth. It is to embrace the notion that this government has the legal, moral, and human (as in human species) right to imply, hint, or ram through the idea that everybody else?and not itself?is lying through its teeth.

Truth is a tricky thing. As the not-so-fairy tale ?The Emperor?s New Clothes? brilliantly shows, all it takes for fiction to become truth is people agreeing to it. If you recall, the story tells of a couple of con artists who hustled an emperor into believing they were the best tailors in the world and could make clothes so magnificent, so dazzling, only the high-minded could see it. When the day came, the emperor (despite much trepidation) led the royal procession wearing no clothes. Except that everyone, having been convinced that those clothes were visible only to the high-minded, tried to outdo one another remarking on the attributes of the emperor?s finery. Until one boy shouted, ?But he?s just naked!? And started laughing wildly.

Lozada is that boy who has just shouted that the empress is stark raving naked. Except that he isn?t laughing wildly, he?s bearing his misery with fortitude. We do not protest his persecution, and we?re just suckers who believe ourselves to possess the sight to marvel at the empress? new clothes.

At least the emperor gave his people a droll and raunchy spectacle with the naked truth. In the state in which she was born, the empress does not.