FACING THE JUDGE

[November 22, 2014]

If you have nothing to do, watch with keen interest the on-going circus in town featuring serious accusations of plunder, or big-time stealing through stealthy means by our traditional politicians per revelations here and disclosures there.

I tell you, you can’t help but be tickled by an idea that if we’d only take them seriously and charge everyone without fear, this nation will be great again as what was dreamed of by Marcos the Dreamer, and surely, we’ll all be a whole lot better.

It’s just too bad that such Marcos’ ‘glorious’ dream became today’s hellish nightmare for fairness and justice because it serves as bad precedent to the next generation after his. And the main lesson we have learned from it is, if you steal, steal big because you could use the loot to hire a devil’s advocate and still retain a big bulk of it, the small portion to negotiate. 

Part of the negotiation is for the prosecution to file charges which are half-baked or prone to technicalities stealthily.  Buy off witnesses and by tendering them an offer they could not refuse in exchange of sealing lips permanently. That’s why it’s hard for the courts of this land to convict the accused, as its decision is based solely on the evidence presented, not on the truth.

Besides, even with incomplete exhibits at hand, for the sake of it, our police personnel concerned file charges against an accused quickly. They don’t bother to study the case better to cover all the possible loopholes that may come out in the proceedings to make sure he’s guilty.

Now, are you not tired of those same faces and personalities who have governed us for so many years already, doing nothing but enriching themselves in power, take us for a ride all of the time, and abuse their position only?

Me thinks the next time we choose the next national leader through a clean election, it’s much better to try and test an untested one than settle ourselves again with an obvious crook who had magically acquired properties through his being a political veteran.

I fully believe it’s not the current constitution per se that should need a little tinkering but some of the existing laws themselves in the country.  Like, why not we lower the amount involved in plunder from Fifty Million Pesos to Five Thousand Pesos so that we will build a gigantic penal colony?

Why not we change the name of a municipal jail, provincial jail, and national jail into National Hospital or Provincial Hospital or Municipal Hospital to say the least, so that anyone accused or convicted of plunder will have nowhere to go but the renamed jail regardless of granting or denial of his motion for hospital arrest?

The fault is in the implementation of the law, dear Brutus, as the subtle, clever, rich and powerful can anytime beat around the bush. But each one of us will have no one to blame but ourselves, therefore, be responsible for everything we individually picked and chose.

Some will expectedly win someday, others will regrettably lose.  That’s when we’ll face and be judged later by the Burning Bush.