Five years of Ampatuan and nothing

ORDINARY TEACHER'S NOTES. 23 NOV 2014. SUN. N1.
Five years of the Ampatuan massacre and nothing. Zilch. Zero. Ibbung. Nunca.

A DEAR friend, Attorney Romel Bagares, reminds us of that horrific act of a regime known for impunity: the Ampatuan Massacre.

Even the dreaded Marcos Dictatorship or whatever it represented in history in our most recent history did not have that sense of the tragic. The Arroyo Regime had that, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo enabling the Ampatuan to claim that part of the country as their fiefdom.

It is the same claim of contemporary political leaders to claim a piece of earth under the Philippine sun as their own, and guarding that piece of earth fiercely with their deceptions, ruses, and donations for basketball courts, waiting sheds, and what-not, and putting up their own billboards and tarpaulins alongside these projects and saying that so-and-so donated this waiting shed good for waiting cows and waiting people with mindless brains.

In the Philippines, there are two kinds of lawyers.

First, those who understand the substance, and thus, the spirit of the law, and deploy this understanding to effect justice.

Second, those who understand the ways to circumvent the law, and thus, become instruments for justice to be delayed, and thus, effectively denied, by invoking useless technicalities in an effort to free the non-so-innocent so that in that newfound freedom, they continue to roam the earth scot-free.

Five years of Ampatuan, Dear God of Justice, is not purgatory.

It is Hell, infierno, the wrong end of justice in da Filipins.

HON/