Below is a moving article written by Atty. Marie Francesa Therese J. Yuvienco which articulates the sense of hopelessness of the Filipino people when it comes to judicial delays and poor and corrupt law enforcement.
The article speaks of the sufferings of the family of the great labor leader, Ka Lando Olalia, who was killed by military assassins in the mid-1980s.
Follow that hearse called Philippine justice
10/31/09
By Atty. Marie Francesca Therese J. Yuvienco
Writers are always told: Show, don’t tell. So when I tell you that the wheels of justice in this country grind slowly, not only should I be hauled off to writer’s gaol for repeating a cliché, I should also be committed to solitary confinement for committing the cardinal vice of telling, not showing. But if I tell you that in a month’s time, 23 years will have elapsed since the gruesomely tortured bodies of labor leader Ka Lando Olalia and Leonor Alay-ay were found discarded in a secluded area in Antipolo without a single perpetrator having been brought to justice, will that satisfy the rule?
By any reckoning, a quarter-century is a long time. It was the night of November 12, 1986 when heavily armed men kidnapped Ka Lando and his driver Leonor, who had just come from a union meeting at Ajinomoto Philippines. It was suspected that the murderers were members of the Special Operations Group of the Department of National Defense but, of course, there was no proof of that. For twelve years, the case lay dormant. In that time, Ka Lando’s wife Nanay Feliciana raised her family of five children – four boys and a girl – on a midwife’s salary of P11,533.00 a month. Her family had long been used to making do: as chairman of the Kilusang Mayo Uno, Ka Lando was not exactly raking in millions, but the family was intact, which was the important thing. However, now that the primary breadwinner had been rubbed out, the years of providing for her family began to carve deep furrows onto Nanay Feliciana’s brow. It was the beginning of many nights of dining on chicken feet: Mondays were adobong paa ng manok; Tuesdays were mechadong paa ng manok; Wednesdays were afritadang paa ng manok, and so on. Sundays offered a respite of “mystery meat” which most likely featured gussied-up chicken feet, whatever Nanay Feliciana’s taxed creativity could come up with. (To this day, Ka Lando’s son Jong can cannot look at adidas, the colloquial name for street food that is grilled chicken feet, without wanting to hurl last night’s dinner.)
In 1998, the case broke wide open two witnesses came forward, Medardo Dumlao Barreto and Eduardo E. Bueno, former soldiers affiliated with the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM); both executed affidavits recounting their involvement in the slaying of Ka Lando and Ka Leonor. Barreto and Bueno named Col. Eduardo E. Kapunan, Jr. and Oscar E. Legaspi, among others, as being in the thick of the preparation and execution of the plot. That, however, was only the beginning of what would become a quixotic quest for justice. Eleven years after Barreto and Bueno came forward, Kapunan and Legaspi are still to be arrested; they have not been arraigned and they have not been placed in detention. Twenty-three years after Ka Lando and Ka Leonor were killed, the crimes are still unpunished.
The reason is that to this day, Kapunan and Legaspi have, through legal machinations, defied every attempt to arrest them, even though the Supreme Court has ruled, with finality, that they are not entitled to the defense of amnesty and that a prima facie case for the double murder exists against them. They may have lost that battle, but it’s a war of attrition they are waging. The purpose of delay is to wear the enemy down; that or wait for the parties and their witnesses to die, in the meantime, avoid detention for a non-bailable offense.
I am devoting this issue’s column to Ka Lando and Ka Leonor because I am afraid. I am afraid that as time lurches on, people will begin forgetting who they are and what they fought for. Rolando Olalia and the assassinated Senator Benigno Aquino share one thing in common: both were gunned down for principles for which they were willing to lay down their lives. Where they differ is that Ka Lando did not have a wife who would later become President or a daughter with a genius for keeping her family’s surname foremost in the public’s mind. Ka Lando’s face isn’t stamped on any money bills and his name isn’t appended to an international airport; the only infrastructure dedicated to him is the road, known now as Olalia Drive, near where his body was recovered. He hasn’t achieved that iconic status that makes it cool for his likeness to be silkscreened onto t-shirts, like Che Guevarra, or an article of fashion to be inextricably linked with him, like Fidel Castro’s caps. His name will live on, certainly, but only in some dusty archives, rediscovered by a student required to do research, but still, only a name and a fuzzy image preserved on microfilm in a library, but his murder may still go unsolved, and that’s the danger.
Metaphors involving justice are usually unflattering. One, already mentioned, tells of wheels that grind slowly. Another is that of a woman blindfolded so that she can dispense justice without favoring anyone. But combining the two, we have the image of a blindfolded woman behind the wheel, so is it any wonder that justice proceeds like a hearse?
See:
http://blogs.inquirer.net/beingfilipino/2009/10/31/follow-that-hearse-called-justice/
