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The Yellows’ new ‘Jaja:’ Justice amnesia, just-tiis for all

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

10/16/2009

I was on the phone with one of the many political drifters disillusioned by Edsa II’s massive failures of public governance. He had started joining the United Opposition (UNO) just prior to the 2007 elections but now he’s “balik-Dilaw.” After profuse apologies and a whole lot of excuses like “I know Erap is right and my heart is with him but…,”a lot of these proved to be just in line with ABS-CBN’s “shock and awe” for the Yellow dummy. Like him, fair-weather friends of the genuine opposition got irresistibly pulled onto the wagon — even if the band was never forthcoming. They just can’t understand that a bad product cannot sell no matter what advertising is put into it.

Our discussion inevitably led to Marcos, perhaps due to Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos’ inclusion in the UNO senatorial line-up. My confused balik-Dilaw friend angrily blurted, “Pinagpapatay kasi tayo niyan.” So he got a piece of my mind on the matter.

In the aftermath of the Ninoy Aquino assassination, the Yellow movement built itself around the “Justice for Aquino, Justice for All” cry, also known as Jaja. But what have we really seen during their years in power? Have they truly applied their much-vaunted “justice for all” principle?

Surely, they must not have done justice to Philippine democracy when they summarily fired tens of thousands of elected public officials, when they took power in 1986, and then reversed egalitarian political-economic principles with an appointed constitutional commission that set back economic democracy by restoring the oligarchs.

Surely, in the seven years of Cory Aquino, where Kamag-Anak Inc. and Peping Cojuangco’s Northern (jueteng) Alliance flagrantly violated the law and lorded over corruption, they have never held these characters to account for their transgressions, either through succeeding Yellow governments or their own Yellow civil society.

Of course, we know that as the mantle of Yellow power was officially passed on to Fidel Ramos in 1992, Ramos himself got mired in hundreds of billions of pesos of scams, from the P7-billion Centennial Expo scam (investigated by Rene Saguisag who recommended prosecution) to the P40-billion Fort Bonifacio scam, the sale of which was supposed to go to the Armed Forces Modernization Fund but disappeared into thin air.

It was only President Joseph Estrada who started serious investigations into these cases. That’s why the Yellows, including FVR, conspired to depose the elected leader to keep these plunder cases from ever seeing the light of justice.

Ironically, none of the self-proclaimed crusading Yellow journalists bring up these FVR cases at all, yet they get all the Catholic Mass Media and other journalism awards.

When the Yellows’ Edsa II came, their Supreme Court justices, particularly Hilario Davide, deliberately chose not to uphold the Constitution, but instead violated it, by allowing the walkout of prosecutors in the Erap impeachment trial and promulgating their “constructive resignation” fiction as law.

The jaundiced crowd has since coddled the “demonstrably corrupt” and most guilty Chavit Singson, and has been nonchalant about the assassinations of CoA auditor Agustin Chan, Mr. Umali, the Rafanan family, and last but not least, Chavit’s wife beating.

As the Yellows continue to raise Singson as a primary hero of their mythology, I wonder if they have ever considered the impact of their double-standard on the moral sense of society. I wonder if they can fathom the depths of cynicism and rage in the children of those whom the Yellow heroes murdered or done injustice to.

Apart from these, after 21 years of being in charge of the country’s institutions, including its justice system, the Yellows have deliberately failed to uphold the exoneration of Marcos after the dismissal of over half-a-thousand cases filed in US and Philippine courts. They continue to refuse a decent soldier’s burial for him despite his World War II and anti-Japanese guerrilla record.

The Yellows muddle the Ninoy Aquino murder cases while continually pinning the Plaza Miranda bombing on Marcos. Also, the murders in the CPP/NPA operation “Missing Link” aka Cadena de Amor (among other names); the 1987 Mendiola Massacre of 13 farmer-demonstrators; the extra-judicial killings from the time of Cory down to GMA have all been similarly played down.

Of course, who can be oblivious to their continuing oppression of Erap and the masses’ voice?

But over and above these is the unresolved injustice of the policies of globalization, liberalization, deregulation and privatization that have impoverished the nation.

The Yellows now want the nation to have amnesia over the deterioration of justice throughout its 21 years of misrule. They want us now to fall for their new Jaja: Justice amnesia, just-tiis for all. But are we going to let them?

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