EDITORIAL – Time for Paco to try God

It is easy to understand the concern of the parents, friends and supporters of Paco Larranaga regarding the fate of one of the convicts in the celebrated Chiong Sisters rape and murder case.

After all, the Philippine Supreme Court has affirmed with finality all lower court decisions sentencing him and several others to death for the crime, one of the most stirring to have happened in Cebu.

But to go to the United Nations to claim that all the courts in the Philippines that have ever handled the case, including the Supreme Court, have all been wrong and have all given Paco a raw deal is, to say the least, preposterous.

Somewhere in this world, there is a family that is no longer intact. It is missing two daughters, including one who, to this day, has never been found. Both were openly abducted from a mall, beaten, raped and murdered.

No court in the land, and certainly not the United Nations, can ever, ever bring them back to life again. Even justice will not bring them back. All that justice can really do is try to repay, in small measure, a loss that is so terrible.

Any rejection of a court determination of guilt for a crime always rubs people the wrong way, especially people who are increasingly aware of the growing inadequacy of the law to protect law-abiding citizens.

Yet, there is no other institution to which people repair to for redress of grievances except the courts. Any self-respecting society that shuns anarchy or the laws of the jungle has got to always be willing to give the courts a try.

The side of Paco has gone to Spain and is now going to the United Nations. The resolve of those who stand by him is as admirable as it is astonishing. But no country in the world and no organization of nations is ever going to reverse a sovereign action of a sovereign state.

Perhaps it is now time for those who stand by Paco to go to God and seek peace. Amid all conflicts, it is only God who knows the unadulterated truth. In the presence of God, the guilty will fall to their knees and the innocent raised back to purity.