Expect fall outs from Jun Lozada's exposé

I was in third year high school, in 1966, when I first heard of the term "fall out". My classmates, Inocentes Paden, in a report he made in our English class, dwelt on the effects of unclear fall outs. Understandably, his was a non-technical high school student's discourse but its impact was, in our youthful minds, far reaching. Since then, I would always associate the term with something horrible such that if I had my way, I would always associate the term with something horrible such that If I had my way, I would not mention it at all.

Presently, I cannot help but bring back the report of Mr. Paden, years ago and  draw a parallel landscape of an unfolding social and political fall out. Without doubt, the unimanginable damage my classmate painted to us was physical. The fall out that he spoke of was in the form of massive deaths following the detonation of a nuclear device. The kind of cataclysm we need to brace ourselves against and which I am most afraid of may probably result from the revelations of Mr. Rodolfo Lozada Jr.

There are at least two reprehensible scenes contained in the exposé of Mr. Lozada. This article wild dwell on one. It relates to the description of how he was fetched by the planeside. Men, who to him, were military personnel were waiting for him the very moments he disembarked from the plane he rode in from his foreign trip.

It was not difficult to believe the testimony of Mr. Lozada to the effect that he was deprived of his liberty and that such order to snatch him came from very powerful personalities. I had few occasions to meet visiting dignitaries at our domestic airport. While everybody can wait for arriving friends anywhere near the exit gates, meeting someone at the end of the tube of a landing plane is an entirely different matter. It needs clearance from airport authorities.

Mr. Lozada claimed that men, under the pretext of providing protective cover, accosted him in an area that was "off-limits" to airport outsiders. Their presence in a security risk zone led him to imagine that they were personnel of the airport or cleared by "high authorities". In either case, he was in no position to refuse the protection. If he thought of turning down such offer, he did not know how to achieve that end. In any case, his fears mounted when he was spirited out of the airport without going thru normal channels leading to the customs and immigration counter. They were passing thru corridors not intended for arriving passengers like him!

Did not Mr. Lozada express serious concern, when separately interviewed by media, upon reflecting on the fate of the murdered public relations expert Bobby Dacer? Like Dacer, he was given an unscheduled trip around Metro Manila. The very fact of his not knowing his driver and escort and that they cruising aimlessly heightened his fear. In that situation, Mr. Lozada knew that someone else was in control and could do to him whatever he wanted.

This situation I would call as kidnapping. The elements of such an illegal detention were all attendant. Mr. Lozada was a man not burdened with any criminal conviction, yet he had not free will to go wherever he pleased. His guards imposed their will upon him. He was not in the position to say no to being escorted. Whether he wanted it or not, the men were there to bring him wherever they chose. Given such a horrifying circumstance, he could only pray for a miraculous escape.

Indeed, that Mr. Lozada came out from that horrible experience to tell our country what happened to him was like a nuclear explosion. There are deadly fallouts to expect. Because his tale, spiced as it was with harrowing details, remained solidly credible despite contrasting stories woven my highly placed authorities, I brace for the happenstance of fall outs. How about you, are you ready?

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