By Bobit S. Avila
The Philippine Star
The Philippine Star
As of this time, I’m not yet able to make comments on the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III on his first year as President. I can only hope that we didn’t get to hear another motherhood statement from the President. I have heard all the SONAs that were made from the time of President Ferdinand E. Marcos to President Cory Aquino, President Fidel V. Ramos, President Joseph “Erap” Estrada and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and they seem to follow a very similar pattern. They are very well crafted speeches, designed to make the President look good.
But in the end, all those SONAs failed to deliver as expected, regardless of who made them. Perhaps the best SONAs were that of President Marcos, Tita Cory and FVR, but just the same, they had not resulted in the upliftment of the Filipino people from the ravage of the Second World War up to the present. This begs the question, “Where did we go wrong?”
This brings us to believe that we are indeed cursed by the late President Manuel L. Quezon who once said, “I would rather see this country run like hell by Filipinos rather than run like heaven by the Americans.” No wonder the number one dream of Filipinos is still to get that precious US green card so they could get a taste of that American dream, which is “A life of prosperity and the pursuit of happiness.” But even in dreamland America, that dream is fast turning into an elusive dream.
I have pointed out so many times already that our biggest problem stems from our centralized system of government, which has not been working since the dark days of Martial Law. This is why today, despite the earnest efforts of President P-Noy Aquino and his drive to eradicate corruption, he hasn’t made any dent on this campaign simply because corruption has become a way of life, which was institutionalized by the Marcos Dictatorship. This is why I prayed and hoped that President P-Noy’s SONA would include political reforms through a constitutional convention (con-con) so we could reorganize this nation and start anew.
Another problem that we as a nation continue to suffer that is yet far from being solved is our serious lack of speedy justice. While there is good news coming from President P-Noy who recently handed out increases in the salaries of our court judges, there seems to be nothing that our justices have promised us in return for this salary increase in the form of speedy justice.
Today, we still suffer from double standard of justice. When then President Erap Estrada was convicted of plunder, he never tasted the four walls of a jail cell. Instead, he was given the honor of a house arrest. When Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson became a fugitive hiding from the law, when he returned, he never tasted a jail cell and worse, he was returned to his office as senator of the land. If he were an ordinary man running against the law, guilty or not, that man would be charge for evading arrest, which is a crime in itself. But in this country, we live a double standard of justice which is the rule, rather than the exception. This is the rape of Lady Justice!
How faulty is our justice system? We don’t have to look far. The Vizconde massacre took more than a decade to solve and in the end, the Supreme Court released the principal suspects, Hubert Webb et al. Yet when the Department of Justice (DOJ) was ordered to pursue this case, the DOJ learned from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) that the primary suspect, Hubert Webb, was indeed in the Philippines when the crime of rape and murder was committed against the Vizconde family.
But all that is water under the bridge because of that legal dictum that no man must be charged for the same offense twice lest he suffers double jeopardy. But in the end, the Filipino people already know who the guilty parties are. In the case of Hubert Webb, if he was not guilty of that crime, then why use the alibi that he was in the US?
How many more celebrated cases are still being investigated or languishing in our courts? The Corbito-Dacer double murder case seems to be headed in the clearing of the principal suspects. Perhaps the truth will come out someday that Bubby Dacer killed his driver Corbito?
In Cebu, the celebrated case against Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA) demigod Rep. Ruben Ecleo for parricide is still in the courts and nothing is being done about the killings of the family of Ecleo’s wife in Mandaue City a year after Ecleo was arrested. Should we dig some more, like ask the question that everyone already knows the answer as to who killed Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.? As we pointed out already, in this country, it is Lady Justice who has been raped and murdered and there are no principal suspects!
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. Avila’s columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.
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