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Friday, March 29, 2024

Holy night

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"Have a blessed Christmas!"

 

After an entire decade, the long reach of Lady Justice has finally caught up with the infamous Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao, masterminds and perpetrators of the deadly massacre in November 2009 that claimed 58 lives and put a macabre twist to the innocuous name of the construction equipment called backhoe.

It wasn’t just the destruction wrought on innocent lives, so horrific that the 58th victim was excluded from damage reparations because he was identified only by his dentures. What drove the last nail into the coffin of public perception were the news photos of the sneering, glazed-eyed Ampatuan scion who orchestrated the killings on-site, reportedly under the influence of drugs on that day.

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After six years of no movement under PNoy, the trial picked up speed under President Duterte, who as mayor of Davao at the time lent a helicopter to the responding security forces, allowing them to intercept the perpetrators in the act of backhoeing. That chopper was part of the forceful response of then-President Arroyo, who wasted no time in calling out the troops, ordering the arrest of her erstwhile allies, seizing their assets, and securing the evidence, all with the loss of not a single life or piece of evidence.

I remember being on a cruise ship off Mexico when I got a call from the Palace urgently asking me to come back to my spokesman’s duties. Unfortunately no flights out were available except a roundabout route through Alaska, of all places. To this day I regret not being the one to announce to the country that martial law was being declared—if only for just a month, and only in Mindanao. That privilege will belong solely to Marcos press secretary Kit Tatad from an earlier era.

I once shared TV studio space with Maguindanao mayor Toto Mangudadatu, a calm young man whose wife led the list of victims. I would like to think that his clan can find closure with this court decision. It would be a fitting holiday gift to the region that he helps to lead, one that is now embarked on a new path of autonomous peace and development—thanks again to Duterte—in which there can be no more place for blood debts and an endless cycle of reprisals.

* * *

The latest Pulse Asia survey for the fourth quarter of this year will have the dwindling ranks of yellow forces tugging at their hair again. Duterte’s overall approval ratings soared from 78 percent in September to 87 percent in December. His improvement was virtually across the board, except for a 2-point drop in Metro Manila. Not surprisingly, this drop is what the Inquirer chose to highlight in its story.

Observers credited the euphoria created by our successful hosting of the Southeast Asia Games during the week of the survey, as well as significant decline in poverty. As to the latter, though, one has to wonder why in that cas his popularity remained the same, 84 percent, among the poorest “E” class. The latest news about the adverse effect of import tariffication on our rice farmers might be to blame. We’re now learning that the benefits of cheaper imported rice are being stolen by unscrupulous middlemen who’re playing the same hoarding game that they do with local rice.

In this holiday season, one might be alarmed by the popularity of a president who’s so vocally anti-Catholic. And yet the overt religiosity of our country has never been higher. It may well be that the Filipino’s mentality has two compartments, one for his church and one for his government. This lets him discount the statements made by one about the other—whether it’s a popular Duterte railing against priests, or the same priests pushing an Otso Otso senatorial state that went down to ignominious defeat this year.

This whole Church-State separation thing is a lot more complicated than it seems. Conversion is ideal, but not always practicable, and besides, it cuts both ways. Better to find the common ground—no matter how small it might be—that allows all of us to celebrate together the birth of a Child that not all of us may believe was Divine.

* * *

Another president is headed into his own troubles, this time at the hands of a House of Representatives dominated by an opposition that wants to make him only the third head of state in his country to be impeached.

We’re talking of course about US President Trump, against whom two counts of obstruction of justice have been proffered by the Democrats in the House as the basis for impeachment. Nobody expects it to prosper when it comes up for trial in the Senate, which is controlled by his Republican party-mates. So why are the Dems even bothering?

It’s obvious that the real intention is to cripple Trump’s reelection prospects next November against a field of Democrat nominees that still swings too far to the left of the American heartland. A booming US economy also helps his chances; according to Moody’s credit rating agency, only one postwar US president has failed to win reelection when the economy was doing well.

It’s revealing that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists that the Senate describe its own evidence and witnesses before she’ll send up the impeachment charge. Isn’t that placing the burden of proof on the innocent? Keep in mind that the offense for which Trump is charged—allegedly asking the Ukrainian president to investigate a political rival of his, in exchange for US foreign aid—never really materialized, because that investigation in fact never subsequently happened, and the foreign aid was in fact delivered.

It’s looking more and more like the impeachment trial will fall apart from its own dead weight. In which case Trump will coast to victory next year as an aggrieved victim of Democrat machinations. And that will be simple justice rendered against the anti-Trump fanaticism of the bi-coastal cultural Left and the “deep state” inside the Beltway, many of whom are also the same guys who keep howling for Duterte’s head.

In this holiday season, it’s good to remember that “the Donald” is someone who’s not only likely to leave countries like us alone—if only because he’s really not interested in countries other than his—but who’s also not ashamed to put his religious beliefs (no matter how manufactured they might seem) out there for everyone to see: Against abortion, against same-sex unions, against gender denial. That’s a powerful bully pulpit that he speaks from.

* * *

On the eve of Christ’s birth, these luminous words from the Gospel (Luke 1: 67-79) spoken by Zechariah as he proclaimed the coming of the Son of Man for whom his own son, John the Baptist, would simply be the precursor:

“[The Lord] has raised up a horn for our salvation within the house of David his servant, even as he promised through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old: salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us…that, rescued from the hand of enemies, we might worship him in holiness and righteousness before him for all of our days.”

Have a blessed Christmas, dear reader!

Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.

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