I’m writing this piece on another one of the interminable anniversaries of Ninoy’s assassination, in another century and millennium.
Yesterday was when the yellow ghouls again disinterred the fading memory of a deeply flawed man, ultimately humbled into spiritual conversion by years of solitary detention, whose spectacular miscalculation of the rapacity of the political landscape around a dying dictator put him squarely in the path of a gunman’s bullets on the airport tarmac.
Fortunately for him, the victory of undeclared hero-hood was snatched from the jaws of death by the events of Edsa two years later, when a hail of similar bullets into the Edsa crowd was stayed by miraculous intervention—not, I maintain, for our sake, but in order to create a powerful mythology of “people power” that would, only a few years later, help tear down the iron curtain surrounding a vast and medieval country whose consecration to Our Lady she had requested at Fatima a century ago this year.
Unfortunately for us, however, defeat was later snatched from what should have been the victory of “peaceful revolution” when EDSA’s professed ideals were hijacked, not by Jacobins with guillotines, but by the same small circle of ruling families who, through one factional strife after another, have brought the country to its present pass.
If our people, once past the heady experience of “people power” in 1986, subsequently relapsed into their former apathy and cynicism–conditions fed by the opiate of mindless entertainment and the debilitating dependency of patronage—blame the cultivators of patronage, the purveyors of favors, the dispensers of unearned largesse.
As in the drug wars, it’s not the users, but the pushers, who should be lined up against the wall.
***
Yesterday’s EDSA rituals were made doubly ghoulish by the persistent new campaign of the yellows to elevate yet another unwitting victim of violence, 17-year-old Kian de los Santos, to the same status of undeclared hero-hood.
The teenager was shot dead during a single day of multiple police operations against the drug trade in Caloocan City. Despite police claims that he had fired back at them, CCTV footage surfaced showing the boy being dragged somewhere by a couple of burly men, though it’s unclear how much time elapsed between the footage and the actual shooting.
The precise circumstances surrounding the death of Kian are now being intensively investigated by the PNP, the NBI, and, who knows, maybe soon enough by Congress, whose members rarely pass up opportunities to preen before the media as they investigate in order to legislate. These inquiries are where the facts of Kian’s death properly belong, not in the imaginative efforts of PR hacks and trolls.
As for the deeper significance of his death, it lies nowhere near any of the battle lines now being drawn up by the political camps on both sides of the Duterte divide. The taking of any life matters, especially one so young, and can only be explained but never excused. The killing of anyone, no matter how justifiable, is always a matter for the confessional box.
This is why, for the final word on the moral meaning of Kian’s death, as well as the proper ways to deal with it, I can only turn to the Church through my bishop, Cardinal Chito Tagle. In his message read at Masses last Sunday, he asks us “to reflect, pray and act” according to the following guidelines:
Consultation—Illegal drugs are a real and destructive menace. It is not just a political or criminal issue, but a humanitarian concern affecting all of us. Thus, instead of being divided by it, we should face it together. All sectors should come together and listen to each other in order to chart a common path.
Reparation—In the book of Genesis, Cain who had just killed his brother Abel was thusly reproved by God: “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil.” To remind us that any spilled blood comes from our brother, the Church will offer nine days of prayers for everyone who has died because of drugs and the war against it.
Action—The Manila archdiocese operates a parish-based drug rehabilitation program called “Sanlakbay” in partnership with local governments and the police. Basic ecclesial communities (BECs) and other lay organizations are enjoined to support this program.
I suspect that the markers for the true significance of Kian’s death will be laid down by everyone’s efforts, especially among the Catholic faithful, to heed the Cardinal’s enjoinder, which springs not only from today’s headlines, but also from the Source, thousands of years ago, of the Cardinal’s apostolic authority.
***
All this talk of death prompts me to close on a much happier note about prospective new life: that of my first-ever grandchild, now about one month since conception, and a future proud citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Words fail me at the giddy prospect, finally, of my long-awaited apo-stolate.
May God shower His Divine Graces upon my panganay na apo and his or her soon-to-be proud parents!
Readers can write me at [email protected].
