IT HAD to happen sometime. And it did, quite fortuitously last Monday, as though with the blessings of heaven.
Six of the “Morong 43” have filed a P15-million civil suit against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. They are Dr. Merry Mia Clamor, Dr. Alexis Montes, Gary Liberal, Ma. Teresa Quinawayan, Reynaldo Macabenta and Mercy Castro. “We want Arroyo to know that she can’t get away with what she did,” said Edre Olalia, the lawyer of the six.
They didn’t know it was Arroyo’s birthday last Monday. They may not have given her the perfect gift, but they have done exactly that to their country. That was what made it look like heaven took a hand in human affairs.
About time it came. The arrest of the “Morong 43” was an atrocity. It came at a time when Arroyo, who was desperate to hold on to power, or who could not quite get enough of it, felt free to do things like this. The lack of due process alone should have voided its validity, as the government that came afterward recognized. The fact that those who were arrested, whatever their political color, were doing something good for the country, which was taking care of the health of the poor, something government wasn’t doing, made it all the more reprehensible.
In fact, I don’t know why Editha Burgos and the kin of the disappeared and murdered during Arroyo’s rule do not band together and file a class suit against Arroyo. That was what the families of the victims of torture, summary executions, and disappearances during Marcos’ time did, and they won their case. In fact, they have gotten compensation quite literally for their pains, though the amount is merely token and won’t make up for the deaths or the ordeal. It’s the victory itself that’s the real cause of elation, putting the law in alliance with memory, forbidding the rewriting of history, or the burying of truth, which has become this country’s favorite pastime. You want to make a hero of a certified torturer and murderer?
The number of political activists who died during Arroyo’s time is mind-boggling, a thing that ought to haunt legally or otherwise not just Arroyo but all those who helped her wreak the carnage. The plaintiffs in the “Morong 43” case have included Norberto Gonzales, the former national security adviser, in their brief. A class suit by the families of the murdered political activists should include him as well, as indeed, Jovito Palparan, the general Philip Alston found directly responsible for the massacre. If Arroyo needs to be shown that she may not get away with manhandling and illegally imprisoning health workers, she needs even more to be shown that she may not get away with mounting some “killing fields.”
I hope the kin of the hundreds of political activists who were murdered during Arroyo’s time bestir themselves to file that class suit, and soon. Along with the suit filed by six of the “Morong 43,” that should bring things into perspective. That perspective is that Arroyo’s greatest crime was not the plunder of the nation’s riches, it was the impoverishment of the Filipino’s life. Her corruption, like that of Marcos, did not consist solely, or even chiefly, of the theft of the nation’s money, it consisted primarily, and quite epically, of the theft of the vote, the theft of life, and the theft of soul.
While I applaud government’s efforts to fight corruption, I cannot applaud the narrowness of its vision in that respect. Indeed, while I applaud government’s efforts to punish the corrupt, chief of them Arroyo, the fountainhead of pillage during her time, I cannot applaud the way it limits its perspective on corruption to pillage, particularly with Arroyo. That is like trying to pin down the Ampatuans for abuse of authority. Arroyo’s real crime was not that she ransacked the nation’s coffers, it was that she razed down everything in her path.
Can we be so inured to atrocity that a thing like “Hello, Garci” no longer stokes us to rage? Can we be so inured to death and dying that the hundreds of Filipino youth buried in shallow graves no longer drive us to fury? Can we be so inured to obscenity that the blotting out of right and wrong—no, the rewarding of the wicked and the punishing of the innocent throughout Arroyo’s rule—no longer makes us feel like we have been thoroughly screwed?
Corruption, in the sense of Arroyo’s plunder, is merely derivative. It owed to the original sin of stealing the vote. Which owed in turn to a mind or heart poisoned, polluted, corrupted by power. To remain in power, Arroyo had to jail people who were a threat to her rule, which included the “Morong 43” whose truly subversive act was tending to the needs of the poor, a thing her government was incapable of doing. To remain in power, she had to massacre the people who were a threat to her rule, chief of them the ones who had a track record for ousting tyrants, the youth of this country. To remain in power, she had to corrupt the congressmen, the judges, the bishops, the pillars of civil society, the journalists, the generals.
That is the corruption we ought to be looking at. That is the corruption we ought to be making Arroyo pay for. I truly hope the class suits in this respect come flying thick and fast. It will be justice.
It will be class.
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I have to say this again because some people have been complaining that I have not been responding to them in Facebook and that my page is not updated. I do not—repeat, I do not—have a Facebook account. Nor do I foresee having one in the near future. It’s all I can do to manage my life without it.
I do not know who runs the Facebook page, or pages, that appear in my name. All I know is that it is not me and that they do not represent me. I wish they would make that disclaimer, as I have pleaded in the past, but apparently that seems too much to ask. Onli in da Pilipins.