Old wounds

We seem to have an overabundance of untended wounds, physical and social alike; even without touching on poverty and education. The United Nations Secretary-General Ba Ki-Moon announced the release, over the weekend, of the Annual Report of the Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. The Philippines was included as one of the worst children’s rights violators of the last five years. In the press release from the UN: “The report also identifies the groups which subject minors to the most brutal violence, such as killings, maimings, rapes and other sexual assaults… Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, warned that “we still live in a world with those who would use children as spies, soldiers, and human shields,”… The persistent violators include Abu Sayyaf, the New People’s Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), three insurgent groups that are active in the Philippines.” The report does state that the reports on child abuse in the Philippines are indicative; there is a lack of resources on the ground to verify and fully investigate abuses. Our hope is the next administration will allocate resources to conduct a full investigation.            

Physical wounds remain 65 years after the re-conquest of the Philippines from the Japanese Occupation. In terms of damage and loss of life, we rank up there with Warsaw, Hiroshima, Berlin and Stalingrad. The worst urban fighting occurred in Manila; over a one month period in 1945 over 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed. We see the shell that is Intramuros not as a source of pride, but endless dismay over what could be. Today, it is not so much the remaining damage, but what it represents: A lack of progress, a failure to build a better Manila. 

Our country never really healed in the aftermath of Martial Law and EDSA I. The intervening 24 years has done nothing to change this. In 1996 we wrote that “Although EDSA drove President Marcos to exile, the country is still run by the very same people who ran it during the dictatorship. No behest borrower was prosecuted. Whether our government is a dictatorship or a ‘democracy’, it seems to be run by the very same oligarchs.” However, we remain hopeful. Just as in the days immediately after May 10, we all hoped that the Philippines had moved forward as a democracy. No election is perfect, and an automated system was never going to fix all of the problems in elections. The only way that it will be fixed is through educating the electorate. In evaluating the automated elections the Comelec and Congress have to identify actual areas where there were problems in the system and address them. This is a necessary step in preparing for future elections. At times though, rumor-mongering and grandstanding seems to be prevalent. Presenting credible, factual evidence should be the order of the day.

On Sunday, F. Sionil Jose in his “Letter to Noynoy” called again for the solving of the Senator Ninoy Aquino murder. Solving the Ninoy murder case has become more than just the proper application of justice; it has taken on a symbolic context. If persons like Ninoy, and the long list of high-profile unsolved murders and disappearances, cannot get justice, what hope is there for the common man?

A major component of healing the country is the re-establishment of rule of law and a sense of justice. They are integral parts of the development of social good. Instead of a rule of law, we seem to have a rule of impunity.