The less said about the case, at this stage, the better – but it can’t be helped that it remains a high-profile one. The children were those of Negros Occidental Rep. Julio Ledesma, whose engagement to movie star Assunta de Rossi has long, itself, been the talk of the town.
In contrast to the little girl from the Lopez clan who was kidnapped and later rescued, where a news blackout was observed by media until the child was safely recovered, it was impossible for the dramatic and bizarre kidnapping of the two Ledesma children – who were snatched, amidst bursts of gunfire which rocked the neighborhood – to have been concealed.
Within minutes, my cellphone was ringing with text messages. Radio announcers had it on the air. What’s somewhat nauseating, on the other hand, is that over-active television and radio reporters have been sticking their microphones under the noses of every Tomas, Ricardo and Kulasa, asking for comment on the matter. Even bishops have been "appealing" to the kidnappers about the …Sus, futility of such a gesture of "protest", bleating about finding ways of resolving "grievances" other than traumatizing two innocent children. If such "appeals" worked, Jesus would never have been nailed on the Cross. Even, the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, had tried to "appeal" for him. I dunno. I must be a dumb-dumb. This didn’t seem like a gesture of "protest" or the result of "grievances".
If anything, the kidnappers were aggrieved over President GMA almost daily presenting captured "kidnappers", carjackers, gangsters, bank swindlers (real or imagined), tax scamsters, et cetera, on live TV in her open-ended photo opportunism. Probably their protest – or sneer, more likely – was to stick a dirty finger up the President’s face. Their message: We’re not scared of you and your TV cameras!
She must, of course, take them on their dare. But this must not mean that she personally has to lead a rescue operation, with TV crews and lensmen in tow, just as she did in that earlier botched raid on a warehouse in Antipolo stuffed with smuggled rice.
Just have the police and our intelligence and justice department agencies to get the job done. No theatrics or hysterics, please.
Most of these institutions, alas, have broken down. We can’t even implement the "death penalty", since there are so many appeals to higher courts to be gone through, then petitions for stay of execution, delays, and, finally, the executions may even be forgotten, or set aside.
No wonder no criminals fear the law. Has "capital punishment" failed, as the critics and refuseniks claim? Are the Europeans "right" when they smugly insist that such a "barbaric" practice be abolished? Sanamagan, give us a break. How can we in this benighted and harassed land say "capital punishment" doesn’t work as a deterrent to crime? It’s never – well, almost never (with rare exceptions) – been tried.
In sum, kidnappers, rapists, torturers, murderers, drug-dealers, and other perpetrators of "heinous crimes" are confident that, one way or another, they’ll get off the hook. Not even as a last resort, but as a first resort, they can even escape from custody or from jail. It’s no secret that arranged "escapes" are a dime a dozen. What has bothered me, over the years – and I’ve written this time and again – are the killers who get "ket out" to do a job, then, after the murder, are tucked away back in jail. The perfect alibi! "I couldn’t have done it!" Those hoodlums can piously exclaim: "I was locked away in prison!"
It’s redundant to report that the President instructed the cops to get the two Ledesma kids back safely and to smash the kidnappers. (There goes the "deadline" cheekily imposed on PNP General Hermogenes Ebdane to crush all the KFR – not Kentucky Fried Chicken but "Kidnap for Ransom" gangs – within six months.)
Just get them. Six months, one year, two years? Simply go ahead, and mop them up, one by one. Patient sleuthing, not publicized sleuthing is what garners results.
Enough sermons for today, already. We’re one of the greatest countries in the world for sermonizing. Once one of us nosey and self-righteous columnists gets on our bully-pulpit, we tend, mea culpa, to sound like we’re bullying everybody.
Let’s just pray for the hostages, for their worried and distraught families, for our lawmen who’re doing the work as well as suffering the embarrassment, for our leaders (that like St. Paul they’ll be converted on the Road to Damascus), for our beleaguered and disappointed nation – and for ourselves. As one who’s seen the depths of despair and suffering in the many beats I’ve covered, in peace and war, and struggled up from the depths myself, I can say it works. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
There’s scheduled to be a change at the key 16th Communist Party congress in Beijing next November 8, where Chinese supreme leader Jiang Zemin is supposed to step down as chief of the ruling 54-million man (and woman) Communist Party – imagine that, 54 million party members supervising the lives and destinies of 1.2 billion citizens.
President Jiang has long been slated to turn over the reins to his announced successor and heir-apparent, Hu Jintao, but judging from the leadership discussions last August in the traditional resort-cum-caucus site of Beidaihe, it doesn’t seem that Jiang is eager to surrender the helm…completely.
He apparently wants to hang on to the post of party secretary general, or, if that’s not possible, at least the chairmanship of the Military Committee – which, in effect, leaves him still in control. When Hu Jintao, then, is conferred the largely ceremonial mantle of "President" next March, will he, therefore, only be a Toothless Tiger? Abangan.
As for Legislative Chairman Li Peng: Will he be content to ride off into the sunset?
Even the taipans and the heaviest-hitters in the Chinese-Filipino business community were there in full force. (Contrary to the official government position, as re-iterated so fulsomely by Speaker Joe de V. in his toast and welcome speech, of a "One-China Policy", many in attendance secretly believe, I mused, surveying that sea of inscrutable faces, in a policy of Three Chinas – People’s Republic of China, Taiwan China, and Chinatown. This is no pun on the famous Chinese classic, which everyone interested in understanding what makes the Chinese tick ought to read: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. There’s no romance in the Three-Chinas policy – it’s hardnosed business and Realpolitik).
At the presidential table, aside from the honoree and his wife, and the Speaker and Gina, there was former President Fidel V. Ramos (whose late daddy, Tata Nachong Ramos, had a long interlude, as Ambassador I mean, in Taipei, and was eventually Foreign Affairs Secretary, after having been Ambassador, Congressman and pre-war National Assemblyman).
There were acting Senate President Juan Flavier, our erstwhile STAR columnist (where was Franklin Drilon?). There were Cabinet ministers, congressmen and senators, foreign ambassadors, sundry diplomats, bankers, business leaders, and gliterrati scattered everywhere. There was our very capable Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Frank Ebdalin. It was an array of WHO’s WHO, and WHAT’s WHAT.
I was totally impressed.
It was also gratifying that the Speaker announced that Chairman Li Peng and his "power group" of officials had signed an agreement for China to underwrite and supervise the construction of that longed-for Philippine National Railways line from Manila to Malolos, to Clark (Angeles), to San Fernando, La Union. If this is successfully completed, it will be a monument to JDV’s unrelenting efforts – and legendary powers of persuasion.
However, a thought intrudes: How will we build the "start of the line" without getting back Tutuban Station in Divisoria? This is the Grand Central Station of the PNR, from where we all used to take our trains to the North dating back to the first railway line established by British engineers in the 19th century. (Why, an English engineer named Kipping even "stole" Jose Rizal’s sweetheart, Leonora Rivera, from our national hero! This was partly JR’s fault, since he was fighting the freedom struggle and flirting all over the world, leaving Leonora languishing at home – and being nagged at by her mommy, who hated Rizal.)
How, indeed, will we recover Tutuban? By grabbing it back? This would put a crimp in "privatization". After all, during FVR’s presidency (or Cory's?), the station was "leased out" to business interests, initially including a Malaysian, and converted into one big "shopping mall". Not even Bayani Fernando can budge those vendors out of their shops inside at this stage. If I’m not mistaken, it was a 25-year lease.
Is this the same Li Peng, the Premier who gave "the order to fire" when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) moved in, guns ablaze, to rout the student and worker demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and the tanks moved in to crush them? ("They crushed us like pancakes," one girl survivor who escaped afterwards wrote). 100,000 protesters were swept away in that "massacre". The scores of thousands who got away from the initial impact were hunted down and run to ground. In his hardline speeches, Li Peng stressed the importance of this mailed-fist approach and justified it. Has the world forgotten? Of course it has!
Five days after the bloody incident, I found myself in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I had gone there to deliver a speech at the "Pacific Round-Table" sponsored by the brilliant Dr. Noordin Sophiee and his strategic studies council, and participate in a discussion on the situation in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
When I got there, Noordin told me: "You know, Max, of course, that you‘re scheduled to speak at the Symposium on China and the Tiananmen Incident." I was aghast. I hadn’t prepared for it, and all my documents, notes, and books on the subject had been left behind in Manila.
Anyway, the hall was jampacked. We were four speakers, one from a Japanese foundation (who was careful not to offend anybody), the Chinese Ambassador Go Gang (an unforgettable name), and the redoubtable and famous Dr. Bob Scalapino of Berkley and American academe, a renowned "think-tanker" who had written several books on Asia and one, I believe, on China.
During the subsequent open forum, someone in the audience stood up and asked me why the Beijing leadership had cracked down with such remorseless cruelty. "Did they think they could get away with it?" The questioner asked.
Surely, they did. That was my reply. Why? "Because they are counting on what is called The Collective Amnesia of Mankind," I said.
I pointed out that the Soviets had cracked down ruthlessly on the Hungarian "freedom fighters" in Budapest (even murdered the rebel leaders, Pal Maleter, who was invited by them to talk under "a flag of truce"), then later smashed the Second Spring movement of Alexander Dubcek et al. in Prague (Czechoslovakia) by sending the tanks of the Warsaw Pact nations to pulverize the heresy of "Socialism with a Human Face." Did the so-called "Free World" remember? In a few years, it was business as usual with the Soviet Bloc.
Scalapino sprung to his feet in outrage. He boomed: "Max, you’re dead wrong. The world will never forgive – or forget."
I looked my friend Bob in the eye, and shook my head sadly. "Of course, everybody will soon forget. And you Americans will be the first to make friends, again, with China."
That’s what happened.
Li was a man who rose to power owing to having been born to it, Communist-style. He was orphaned as a young boy when his parents, in their "underground" fight to overthrow the "imperialist" Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek in Shanghai, were "murdered" by the KMT and their goons of the Green Gang. Li was adopted by Zhou En-lai, one of the foremost heroes of the Revolution as a son of those "martyrs of the Revolution". In short, he was brought up as one, as they say sub rosa in China, of the favored "Party of Princes" – destined for power from childhood as the Second Generation Leadership. Zhou, who stood next only to Mao Zedong in the early hierarchy of power defined by the pioneers of the Long March, after all, was his adoptive father.
Jiang Zemin and Guo Shuyan, too, were accorded preferred treatment in their rise through party ranks as the sons of parents who had "shed their last drops of blood for the sake of the party". This is a generation which is passing away, but it won’t go quietly into the night.
Indeed, the late Chairman Deng Ziaoping (whom I interviewed in Beijing in 1986) reputedly wanted to "retire" Li Peng, but I suspect his own personal lifetime devotion to Zhou En-lai was what stayed his hand in this matter.
But, admittedly, I’m only guessing. When you pretend to "understand" China, too often all you have in hand is a … guess. It is, after all, the "Middle Kingdom" of the Inscrutable East.