Injustice
Injustice
Updated 02:46am (Mla time) Oct 21, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on Page A12 of the October 21, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Manila Metropolitan Area, Philippines -- ANTIQUE Governor Salvacion Zaldivar-Perez says the verdict of Regional Trial Court branch 12 finding Arturo Pacificador innocent of murdering Evelio Javier should be respected and accepted "even if it's painful like the Pangpang case." Perez was referring to the massacre in May 1984 of seven of Javier's supporters. Pacificador, Javier's political archenemy, was also accused of the crime but was acquitted. Only his men were convicted.
"Time heals and Antiqueños know in their hearts who had Beloy Javier killed," Perez added. She herself had four relatives who died in the Pangpang massacre. So that gives her a right to speak with authority on pain and acceptance in this case?
Not so.
This isn't just a personal pain, this is a national one. This is not just an injustice done to Javier, his relatives or to all Antiqueños, this is an injustice done to the nation. The need to right a monumental wrong remains as obdurate as ever. The need to punish the guilty remains as implacable as ever.
There are resignations and resignations. You may resign yourself to dying if you have cancer. You may not resign yourself to being murdered in the prime of life. Nor may the rest of us. We cannot resign ourselves to a monumental iniquity without dying ourselves.
Frankly, it staggers the imagination how Judge Rudy Castrojas could have found Pacificador innocent. He says what public opinion says and what the evidence shows are two different things. He says he can only judge on the basis of what he sees and hears in the court and not outside of it. Fair enough. But this is a case that even the most inept lawyer cannot bungle.
You may never hear someone say he actually heard Pacificador order his henchmen to gun down Javier like a dog in broad daylight. But you can always put two and two together.
Who had the means to murder Javier? Pacificador. He was top honcho in Antique and an ardent Ferdinand Marcos supporter to boot. He was Javier's bitterest enemy and had been accused once before of murdering Javier's people. Who had the opportunity to murder Javier? Pacificador. This was the “snap” presidential election [between Marcos and Corazon Aquino in January 1986], it was the perfect opportunity for Pacificador to show his boss, Marcos, what a loyal servant he was by removing a well-known Cory supporter from the face of the earth.
Who had the motive to murder Javier? Pacificador. That is the most damning thing of all. Who else would want to murder Javier while he campaigned for Cory Aquino? Javier himself points to him as the murderer. Shortly before the snap elections, he left a taped message naming the person who was bent on murdering him: Pacificador. If something should happen to him, Javier told the world in a recorded message, know only that one person could have done it: Pacificador. If Javier had risen from the grave and personally damned his oppressor, he could not have been more categorical.
Castrojos says there are other Pacificadors and not just Arturo. Chief of them is his son, Rodolfo whom the evidence points to as the mastermind. Unfortunately, Rodolfo is in Canada and cannot be made to answer for his crimes. Sorry na lang.
But his logic remains flawed. You grant Rodolfo was the mastermind and not Arturo, so what? The murder was clearly political, as Castrojos' own argument suggests. Why else would Rodolfo -- and his lawyer, Avelino Avellana -- want to kill Javier? If it was political, then Rodolfo could not have done it without Arturo's approval, as Arturo would be the first to reap the reward or punishment for it. And obviously they expected reward, the possibility of Marcos being ousted by an act of people power a month later being beyond the ken of the most fertile imagination.
At the very least then, this is a conspiracy, to go by Castrojos' logic. You assume Rodolfo was the mastermind and not his father, why should his father go free? Conspiracy is a crime. Maybe Arturo should get a lighter sentence -- two life terms instead of three or four -- but why should he go free?
I do not know what legal remedies are left after this ruling-there is the ban on double jeopardy. Though it's easy to see, with idiocies like this, why extra-legal remedies flourish in this country, and why the National People’s Army gets to score points with the public with its routine practice of it.
But I do know one thing, which is that legal remedies or not, we may not slip quietly into the night respecting and accepting this atrocity however painful it is. Time may not heal this wound, it may only cause it to rot to malodorous lengths. There is only one thing that has been known to heal wounds like this, and that is justice.
It is not enough that we know in our hearts who did the foul deed and hope to God he rots in hell. I've heard it so many times before: each time somebody gets murdered in this country and retribution eludes his killers, we should let go, time heals, life goes on. No implacable pursuit of redress is going to bring back the dead.
Wrong. The dead do spring back to life in the dogged pursuit of justice. It is the only thing that makes them do so. Otherwise they are as dead as a doornail and as forgotten as graves with no names. Time does not heal wounds carved by iniquity, it makes them fester. And life does not go on in the face of humongous wrongs, only death does. Life gets pinned down in the grinding wheels of injustice, unable to lift itself to go on. Have you ever wondered why we as a people seem to be floating around in space, with no past or future, not knowing where we came from or where we are going? Have you ever wondered why if we have the sensation of moving at all, we seem only to be moving backward? A people with no sense of right and wrong will always feel that. A people that cannot reward right and punish wrong will always feel that.
No justice, no cure. No justice, no life.
Updated 02:46am (Mla time) Oct 21, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on Page A12 of the October 21, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Manila Metropolitan Area, Philippines -- ANTIQUE Governor Salvacion Zaldivar-Perez says the verdict of Regional Trial Court branch 12 finding Arturo Pacificador innocent of murdering Evelio Javier should be respected and accepted "even if it's painful like the Pangpang case." Perez was referring to the massacre in May 1984 of seven of Javier's supporters. Pacificador, Javier's political archenemy, was also accused of the crime but was acquitted. Only his men were convicted.
"Time heals and Antiqueños know in their hearts who had Beloy Javier killed," Perez added. She herself had four relatives who died in the Pangpang massacre. So that gives her a right to speak with authority on pain and acceptance in this case?
Not so.
This isn't just a personal pain, this is a national one. This is not just an injustice done to Javier, his relatives or to all Antiqueños, this is an injustice done to the nation. The need to right a monumental wrong remains as obdurate as ever. The need to punish the guilty remains as implacable as ever.
There are resignations and resignations. You may resign yourself to dying if you have cancer. You may not resign yourself to being murdered in the prime of life. Nor may the rest of us. We cannot resign ourselves to a monumental iniquity without dying ourselves.
Frankly, it staggers the imagination how Judge Rudy Castrojas could have found Pacificador innocent. He says what public opinion says and what the evidence shows are two different things. He says he can only judge on the basis of what he sees and hears in the court and not outside of it. Fair enough. But this is a case that even the most inept lawyer cannot bungle.
You may never hear someone say he actually heard Pacificador order his henchmen to gun down Javier like a dog in broad daylight. But you can always put two and two together.
Who had the means to murder Javier? Pacificador. He was top honcho in Antique and an ardent Ferdinand Marcos supporter to boot. He was Javier's bitterest enemy and had been accused once before of murdering Javier's people. Who had the opportunity to murder Javier? Pacificador. This was the “snap” presidential election [between Marcos and Corazon Aquino in January 1986], it was the perfect opportunity for Pacificador to show his boss, Marcos, what a loyal servant he was by removing a well-known Cory supporter from the face of the earth.
Who had the motive to murder Javier? Pacificador. That is the most damning thing of all. Who else would want to murder Javier while he campaigned for Cory Aquino? Javier himself points to him as the murderer. Shortly before the snap elections, he left a taped message naming the person who was bent on murdering him: Pacificador. If something should happen to him, Javier told the world in a recorded message, know only that one person could have done it: Pacificador. If Javier had risen from the grave and personally damned his oppressor, he could not have been more categorical.
Castrojos says there are other Pacificadors and not just Arturo. Chief of them is his son, Rodolfo whom the evidence points to as the mastermind. Unfortunately, Rodolfo is in Canada and cannot be made to answer for his crimes. Sorry na lang.
But his logic remains flawed. You grant Rodolfo was the mastermind and not Arturo, so what? The murder was clearly political, as Castrojos' own argument suggests. Why else would Rodolfo -- and his lawyer, Avelino Avellana -- want to kill Javier? If it was political, then Rodolfo could not have done it without Arturo's approval, as Arturo would be the first to reap the reward or punishment for it. And obviously they expected reward, the possibility of Marcos being ousted by an act of people power a month later being beyond the ken of the most fertile imagination.
At the very least then, this is a conspiracy, to go by Castrojos' logic. You assume Rodolfo was the mastermind and not his father, why should his father go free? Conspiracy is a crime. Maybe Arturo should get a lighter sentence -- two life terms instead of three or four -- but why should he go free?
I do not know what legal remedies are left after this ruling-there is the ban on double jeopardy. Though it's easy to see, with idiocies like this, why extra-legal remedies flourish in this country, and why the National People’s Army gets to score points with the public with its routine practice of it.
But I do know one thing, which is that legal remedies or not, we may not slip quietly into the night respecting and accepting this atrocity however painful it is. Time may not heal this wound, it may only cause it to rot to malodorous lengths. There is only one thing that has been known to heal wounds like this, and that is justice.
It is not enough that we know in our hearts who did the foul deed and hope to God he rots in hell. I've heard it so many times before: each time somebody gets murdered in this country and retribution eludes his killers, we should let go, time heals, life goes on. No implacable pursuit of redress is going to bring back the dead.
Wrong. The dead do spring back to life in the dogged pursuit of justice. It is the only thing that makes them do so. Otherwise they are as dead as a doornail and as forgotten as graves with no names. Time does not heal wounds carved by iniquity, it makes them fester. And life does not go on in the face of humongous wrongs, only death does. Life gets pinned down in the grinding wheels of injustice, unable to lift itself to go on. Have you ever wondered why we as a people seem to be floating around in space, with no past or future, not knowing where we came from or where we are going? Have you ever wondered why if we have the sensation of moving at all, we seem only to be moving backward? A people with no sense of right and wrong will always feel that. A people that cannot reward right and punish wrong will always feel that.
No justice, no cure. No justice, no life.
posted by Dante at 2:46 AM
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