A tale of the macabre
Today is an infamous day. It was the day that the dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on Sept. 21,1972, and suborned democracy for almost 15 years. Strangely, it is now a public holiday, courtesy of the incumbent’s desire to honor Eid’l Fitr, the last day of the Muslim Ramadan. As usual, the irony is lost on this administration, which has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt an inability to see beyond their pert little noses.
In the world of feng shui, perhaps strange occurrences like this are not so strange when they happen in the seventh lunar month (this year, beginning on Aug. 20 and ending on Sept. 23), traditionally marked as the Ghost Month in the Chinese calendar. This is the time when ghosts and spirits supposedly roam freely on earth. This could explain why bizarre happenings occur during this period.
One such mysterious episode is the flourishing anti-wiretapping case filed by Ella Valencerina, vice president for Public Relations and Communications of GSIS, against veteran broadcaster Cheche Lazaro. How this case based on an obscure and archaic 1965 law, which many lawyers deemed a non-case, moved on to a pretrial hearing last Sept. 17 and prospered to an actual trial (gasp!) set for Oct. 7 and 8 is totally out of this world.
In the Ms.Com column of June 15, three fundamental questions were raised: 1) How did this case merit an indictment despite the fiscal having heard the full recorded conversation where Lazaro clearly informed Valencerina that she was being recorded more than once?; 2) Why is this case being tried in a Pasay court when the supposed violation took place in Pasig?; 3) Valencerina claims she is doing this as a private citizen but why are GSIS lawyers “collaborating, coordinating and corroborating” with the public prosecutor?
Could this be what it smells like? A menacing case filed by a litigious and touchy GSIS to harass Cheche for exposing the plight of the teachers? So it is worth following this “Tale from the Creep” to see whether good triumphs over evil in the end. And that‘s exactly what I resolved to do. Like most people, I try to avoid hospitals and courtrooms as much as possible. But this was bigger than my phobias. So we joined the family and friends of Cheche who were all present to show their support and protest the oppression. The pretrial hearing was so surreal; Tim Burton would have reveled in it. Here’s my blow-by-blow ghost story for the month:
The Pasay Metropolitan Court, sala of Judge Vito Cruz, is housed on the second floor of Pasay City Hall. The facade of the building is freshly painted in friendly, happy colors. It looked like a Hallmark gift wrapper with stripes of royal blue, lemon yellow and touches of rose peach. Alas, it turned out to be really just an outer cover. The minute you stepped into the building, it was dark, dank, dirty and decrepit. My friend nearly tripped on a broken tile as we climbed up the stairs and entered the courtroom. Boston Legal it was not.
The room was tiny, about 5x5 square meters, adorned with an old wooden table that served as a common desk for the lawyers and clerks. Another makeshift desk was slightly elevated, where the judge’s gavel lay. Old pews that looked like they were donated by various old churches sagged at the combined weight of the spectators and accused. The peeling walls were a sickly beige hue with rusty watermarks. All in all it reeked of decay and corrosion.
All the defendants for the day were asked to come at 8:30 a.m. There was a young Korean man seeking an annulment case. There were three young men all clad in bright yellow long-sleeved camisa chinos. I thought they were Noynoy supporters until we noticed they sat closely to each other because they were shackled. Then there was a barangay tanod who was the plaintiff, not the defendant as we had originally presumed, of a case of “public alarm and scandal” against a no-show who was promptly issued a warrant of arrest by the court. The gallery was a motley mix of TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service), the extended family of Cheche, and some other onlookers. A small TV crew was in the hallway as they were not allowed inside.
The sala was so packed. All stood up as the Judge Vito Cruz sat on her chair and pounded the gavel to start the roll call of the day’s quota of cases. She looked like a no-nonsense, don’t-waste-my-time lady. About 45 minutes later, the case was finally docketed. Almost on the dot, the one suing, Ella Valencerina, arrived with her GSIS lawyer. She had to stand behind as all the seats were taken, but at least she seemed to know that it would have been a complete waste of time to have arrived at 8:30 a.m. sharp as was ordered. Ella looked spiffy and confident in her candy-colored crisp blouse and coiffed ’do. She looked pleased with herself.
Finally the clerk called out, “Case so-and-so, Violation of Anti-Wiretapping law. Ella Valencerina versus Cecilia Lazaro.” On cue, the public prosecutor, who looked at home in her chocolate brown pantsuit and black high-heeled step-ins, began shuffling documents that would be presented or accepted as exhibits. Atty. Em Lombos, counsel of Cheche, did the same. Then, suddenly, there was a white-haired man in a fresh-from-the-hamper blue barong who appeared behind the public prosecutor and kept passing on documents and mumbling in her ear, as if coaching her.
At first, no one paid attention to the man. Many whisperings later, Atty. Lombos asked for the man to identify himself and his role in the case. The man was trying with futility to avoid introducing himself. He said he was merely assisting the public prosecutor and was not going to introduce himself in the case.
With more insistence from Cheche’s lawyer, the judge finally asked him the same question. With a lump in his throat he answered, “I’m Atty. Lazaro.” How weird was this surname coincidence? When pressed further, he reluctantly admitted that he was from the GSIS. But he did not intend to make appearances in court nor introduce himself officially in the case, he whined. He explained that he was merely collaborating with the Pasay public prosecutor. Behind her bangs, the public prosecutor looked unfazed throughout the exchange. Atty. Lombos pointed out that Atty. Lazaro should not be present in the courtroom and that as a GSIS lawyer paid from public taxes, he was in violation of his mandate by actively “assisting” in a private case. Judge Vito Cruz then made a small whisking gesture with her wrist, as if to shoo away a fly. Atty. Lazaro skulked away to the back of the room, taking his place beside Ella Valencerina, who had a smug Mona Lisa smile on her face.
In barely half an hour all ministrations were done and trial dates were set. By this time the room was full to bursting. When all the Cheche supporters took their leave, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief from the peanut gallery, who could finally sit down.
The curtains went down on the theater of the absurd. As I walked away from the courtroom, I kept wondering how far this grisly story will go. How many more victims will be sucked dry by the vampires in power? What silver bullet will we need to save ourselves? The ghost month will be over soon. Hopefully, so will the nine years’ reign of terror.
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