Pardon My French, Part Deux

I first came across Ninoy as a young boy. Mom had somehow come across a bootleg tape of a speech Ninoy gave in Los Angeles in 1983, just before he came home to his destiny. I hear snippets of the same speech on television from time to time. It is, I think, his most remembered and most quoted speech. Ninoy’s tongue was on fire.

Today, as someone much older, I know that his eloquence came from the discipline of free thought made valuable by its prohibition. If anything, Ninoy, even if he was the golden boy of the landed oligarchy, only became the Ninoy of legend after his prison catharsis.

In transcending himself to become legend, Benigno S. Aquino Jr. – not the Senator from the Province of Tarlac – was my first idol. It is because of him that I believe in the potential of the Filipino.

On March 5, the people held criminally responsible for his death were given executive clemency. I surmise that among the reasons for the pardon is the opinion of forensic anthropologist Jerome Bailen that these servicemen who escorted the late Senator could not have pulled the trigger. From what I know of Bailen’s opinion, he thinks that the more plausible theory is that Galman, rogue assassin, pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Ninoy. Unfortunately for these convicts, Bailen’s opinion was excluded from evidence on a technicality. Although I think the exclusion of Bailen’s testimony is sad because it ends in a triumph of legalism over proven science, I have no doubt on the guilt of Ninoy’s guards. They deserve every punishment they’ve received and then some.

Because the power to pardon is a choice entirely personal to the President, it is moot to inquire into the reasons why Ninoy’s killers have been freed. The heirs of the late Senator may shout and claim that the decision is political, but such exercises almost always are. This isn’t to say that the pardon is correct, but it is definitely not right.

Let’s not forget that what keeps the assassination shrouded in mystery is the blatant manner airport security blocked the cameras of the assembled world press, only to relent after the fatal moment passed. To make matters worse, they made sure that Galman, even if he really did kill Ninoy, can never say who gave him the order to kill the Senator. If today we they cannot show someone else pulled the trigger, Ninoy’s killers have nowhere else to look and no one else to blame. By willfully participating in the sham trials and in the grand conspiracy to hide the real mastermind, it was as if they themselves pulled the trigger. Even if they change minds and disclose the true author of this tragedy, they failed to do the right thing when it mattered, and that’s what counts.

Military loyalty ends when loyalty to your country begins. I have no place or stomach for those who confuse the two.

Matapobre

My good friend Lille Bose posted a note on Facebook today. In it, she spoke of how her grandmother, presumably now a retiree living somewhere in Wisconsin, sneered at Barack Obama’s acceptance speech – because, or so the story goes, Barack Obama is a black man and people like her have a general distrust for people of color.

I had an interesting conversation with the “older” people who live next door – my mother and her current best friend, an aunt of hers who spends a few nights now and then coming over for a nice visit. This aunt is a widow who met her late husband (a German national) while working for the United Nations. Like most of my relatives who are now or at one point in their lives based in the United States, she is a fanatical supporter of the Republican Party. She does not fail to send to my mother, my sister, and anyone else in her Yahoo! contact list the latest dirt she finds on Democrats and their candidates, Obama not excluded. She is not alone in this endeavor. Most of my relatives there are similarly engaged in the McCain campaign.

Fortunately, my mother, being sensitive to my libertarian tendencies, has decided to bear the brunt of these information campaigns, which does not mean to say that she does not believe in them – the opposite cannot be closer to the truth – but she hesitates forwarding these messages to me knowing I do not hesitate to classify them as spam.

I Beg Your Pardon

Atty. Fred from Jaromay Laurente Pamaos has in his blawg a small primer on the President’s power to pardon, and I suggest reading it before continuing on any further.

Now although the discourse is filed under criminal law, the power to pardon is a concept that law students encounter in political law. As I remember, the power to pardon of the President is discussed only in broad strokes in criminal law, and only to the extent of its effect on the liabilities of a convicted felon.

Although a pardon, broadly speaking, can be a reprieve from, or a commutation of a sentence, or a remittance of a fine or forfeiture, the President’s power to grant pardons is nevertheless a political exercise. In granting a pardon, the President acts as the embodiment of the Filipino people. It is exercised for and on behalf of the people precisely because a criminal act is considered in law to be a violation against each and every Filipino.

Overwhelmed

Way back when I was an online columnist for this community website, I wrote a small article on how copyright protections exist even for online articles. A group of anarchists had come and plagiarized some of the site’s more popular articles a few days prior and I was asked to lend my opinion on the matter.

Of course this rankled those of more anarchist leanings in the community who believed that once material is posted online, anyone is free to use it to his or her own liking, even if it meant shameless, wholesale plagiarism. Those who opposed their views were dismissed as intellectual lightweights, while those whose criticism withstood logical inquiry were either called names (such as capitalist, fascist, hitler, diktador, or tuta) or otherwise had their character called into question.

Of all their arguments, what held their faith together was this one core belief:

The masses will rise in revolution, with or without you.

On Being a Lawyer

Today is the first Sunday of the 2008 Bar Examinations.

To commemorate the occasion, the PDI published a short essay written by Anski del Castillo. I only really met her once, at our oath-taking. She stood with me and my law school friends as we promised the country to be good and ethical lawyers.

According to the PDI, this was written shortly before that April morning. To do her memory justice, and as we say in the practice, the said letter is herein quoted in full:

In the Philippines, when you say you’re a lawyer, people react in different ways. You sometimes get respect or deference, sometimes a bit of awe. There are of course those who treat you with suspicion, or even hate. Remember that most popular of all Shakespearean quotations? “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (Henry VI, Part II, Act IV)

Questions and Answers No.1, Series of 2008

I got a message from a friend in a forum I used to visit a long time ago, where I made a name for myself writing about what happens in people’s nether regions. One day, a group of women in the forum got together and decided to put together a list of questions they’d like to ask men but never got around to doing it. I surmise that even if they did, all they got flew above their heads.

Fucking Censorship, I Tell Ye.

The other day, I received an interesting e-mail from a dear friend and fellow lawyer, Doranne, who raised the alarm bells over Senate Bill 2464 of the 14th Congress, the proposed Anti-Obscenity and Pornography Act.

According to the Senate website, the Bill has been referred to the appropriate Committee, and has been there since 6 August 2008.

Doranne’s e-mail foretold of gloom and doom:

Patay tayo, Kiko.

Have you heard of Senate Bill No. 2464, the ANTI-OBSCENITY AND PORNOGRAPHY ACT OF 2008? It’s now quietly pending in the Senate. Meaning, this absurd, outrageous, oppressive bill has been passed in Congress without causing any stir.

I’m Bored. Fuck Off.

JUNK WARNING: this post has been edited without changing its content.

I’m still bored, and I’m still pissed.

This is it! I’ve finally run out of things to do, or things that I can do while waiting for the next thing that I can do today. I can’t really do the next thing I’m supposed to do any earlier, because it’s beyond my control.

Updating

Finally, I have some time to update my blog. The good news is that since I’ve passed the bar, I’ve gotten a ton of work. The bad news is that work as a legal professional tends to stay on the heavy side. As in one must finish work as soon as one gets work because work has this tendency to pile up.

No one likes the lawyer who sleeps on the job.

So, what’s up with me? I’m plurking a lot now, mostly because plurking is relatively brainless compared to blogging. Blogging means several minutes dedicated to the commitment of thought to virtual paper. Since in my profession, the translation of thought into speech closely resembles actual work, I’ve been trying to avoid anything remotely related to structured thought. Well, trying to anyway.

More later, when my daughter isn’t bugging me to watch Spongebob on Youtube.

Five years later.

We’re delaying the celebration of our fifth wedding anniversary to mid-June. We’ve got tickets to Singapore for a food pilgrimage.

Anyway, here’s a video that almost didn’t make it on that fateful day. Clang took some extra time editing a MTV that ended up on the cutting room floor – I don’t think we were on the same page on that one. It looked nice, sure (he kept on showing it to other people long after our wedding), but it just wasn’t coherent with the rest of the celebration.