Arrogance or ignorance?
Credit to Author: RENE SAGUISAG| Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 16:42:51 +0000
CHINA’s Prez Xi, as host, told our Prez, his guest, that its irredentist position on the West Philippine Sea is not negotiable. The Duterte administration had needlessly announced in high profile fashion that it would raise the issue, as if expecting a petrified Xi to crumble and lay down and die, in the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor.
The naughty boy from Davao was told, no way, and not to raise it again; his reported response sounded like a meek, “Yes, master.” (My pals, Ted Locsin and Sal Panelo, differ on whether their Boss was apologetic. Sal reportedly quoted him as saying: “I didn’t want to alarm you with what I’m about to raise because of your problem in Hong Kong, which is why I’m asking for forgiveness, but I need to say this because I promised my countrymen.”) Then the cunning master and the disappointed vassal went together to the Fushan basketball arena where we played Italy; we got pummeled, black and blue.
Our Prez may have been our unlucky charm in a game where we may simply be doomed to be humiliated by taller, bigger foes.
And then those pixes proliferated showing Digong as leading others make the Nazi Hitler fist bump, which continues to vilify the Jews, the most persecuted minority in history, according to Jewish Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Offensive fist-bumpers
Do the fist-bumpers not know that the Jews find the gesture offensive? Indeed, it is criminal in many countries such as Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Russia, France, Ukraine, etc. The possible escape clause lies in the possible conscientious objection on the part of our Prez.
Done in the US, the vilified but not cash-strapped, not untalented and not uninfluential minority would raise a firestorm of protest over the gesture. It may not be criminal Down Under, but Aussie spymaster Nick Peter Warner was taken to the woodshed for doing the fist bump in August 2017 in Malacañang with our Prez, who, prudently, we did not see do it when visiting Israel.
It’s a toss-up then whether it is possible arrogance or conceivable ignorance behind the needless vilification of a people with whom we have friendly relations. I don’t recall our Prez shown in a picture doing the Hitler salute when he visited Israel. Good.
In November 2017 Prez Trump was warned of Prez Duterte’s salute here in Manila, the signature gesture of a perceived fan of Hitler and Marcos. When the world leaders met here then, the alarm was sounded that copying their controversial host’s signature salute could land them in hot water.
Our Prez usually seeks to have visitors, or those he visits, pose for photos with him doing the salute. But we critics warn that the gesture represents his messy, bloody brutal drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives and shattered countless impoverished families. Many of us are uncomfortable with its similarity to Hitler’s salute.
Save, reform and rehab?
Now, we vilify our brothers in prison. Muntinlupa authorities are in what Sen. Bato dela Rosa says “happens.” I note though the absence of any similar outcry in regard to the Correctional Institute of Women. For them, I intervened in the Supreme Court after youngish lawyer Michael Evangelista sued in 2013 to have our Muntinlupa brothers benefit from the retroactive application of Republic Act (RA) 10592, granting more benefits. He won. I just piggybacked for our Correctional sisters. Michael and I use UIOGD, Latin for “That in all things God may be glorified,” a fixed star Benedictines go by, if I may remind fellow Bedan Digong.
If Mon Tulfo and my Laguna informants are correct on our theories, Mayor Antonio Sanchez may not apologize for something he never did, even if he has countless other sins and crimes to say sorry and pay for. Mon says his informant told him it was a son of the mayor who should pay for what he is now paying for. Poetic and karmic justice? Only God knows. Along with the mayor. You and I don’t.
Same thing with the Chiong-Larranaga case in Cebu. That the convicting judge, another fellow Bedan, was a reported suicide, intrigues. The competing theory was that he was murdered. If so, why?
In any case, try to visit the City Jail in Manila, our nation’s capital, an egregious disgrace, and change your opinion of prisoners forever. Do we save, reform and rehab? Or do we heed Dante Alighieri’s “abandon all hope?” Or that of the Lord Jesus saying, for I was in prison and you came to visit me? Or do we see arguable mobocracy in Laguna, and Cebu for that matter?
In Cebu, why did the judge take his own life? Accused Paco Larranaga was among those he had convicted. Being a Spanish citizen also, Paco is now in Spain, where he reportedly works as a chef by day but goes back to jail every night. Good.
Spain, like Italy, does not impose jail time for septuagenarians (OK, full disclosure, I just became an octogenarian), but community service and maybe house arrest. To me, these are two European nations practicing Christianity, which may have neither failed nor succeeded here for the simple reason that it has not really been tried, to borrow from Gilbert K. Chesterton.
Why do I, a life’s loser, write the way I do? I simply imagine myself as Mayor Sanchez or Paco, or one who cares for them.
Sal Panelo, written to by the Sanchezes for assistance, referred the letter to the proper body.
He arguably simply complied with what we require in Sec. 5 of RA 6713 (the Salonga-
Saguisag Law, ehem), requiring prompt and expeditious action on requests for assistance from our enfranchised citizens, “particles of popular sovereignty,” per Justice Jose P. Laurel. Nothing to apologize for here. The Sanchezes should not be above the law, but should not be beneath it, either.
But Sal suing for libel? Ang sarap batukan. You have to learn to thrive in a hardy climate, Sal. Had Joker and I still been in the Palace guest house, we would have importuned Prez Cory not to sue Louie Beltran, who had written that she had hidden under the bed during a bloody 1987 coup. No one could take seriously any assertion of cowardice on the part of one who fought and beat back Marcos, Enrile, Gringo and RAM, et al.
And I am glad a unanimous Supreme Court threw out the Kenkoy case against PNoy on Mamasapano 68 (68, to include the Muslim victims; their lives also matter). He answers to his conscience and to history on that one. But, this morning, we’ll be back in the Department of Justice for a hearing in another Kenkoy case by Convict-oy, ooops, Bikoy Advincula, to face the tribune of the people, not of the Palace, which office, with all due respect, may have lost its way, in a sorry case of premature ejaculation.
To please and brownnose Malacañang, it abandoned a sound tradition and could not wait for some record to develop elsewhere, before deciding who to aid at an appellate level.