Talking about justice delayed!

For tonight’s show on Straight from the Sky, we bring you to the foothills of Banawa to the priory of St. John’s Community where Bro. Justin Lee will give us an idea of what this religious community has been doing in the past 13 years in Cebu. St. John’s Community is a group of priests, brothers, sisters and lay people who devote their time in a deep contemplative spirit and devotion to Eucharistic Adoration. They are powerful witnesses to the Gospels and fully devoted to evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Every now and then, we always evangelize our tv viewers by having a priest explain to us lesson we can learn from the Bible. St. John’s Community is devoted to the teachings of St. John the Beloved whose scripture writings give Catholics an insight of how God loves the very people he created by sending his only beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ to become flesh and to dwell amongst us. To give us the Gospel according to John, we have with us Bro. Justin Lee who will not only tell us what St. John’s Community is all about, but shares with us something that they learned from the writings of St. John. Watch this very interesting show tonight on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00 pm.

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Justice! Where’s Justice in this country? Where do businessmen go when local government officials who are supposed to be public servants demand bribe against businessmen and if they refuse, these so-called public servants threaten to destroy what these businessmen built by the sweat of their brow? When we learned that Lapu-Lapu Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Toribio Quiwag of Branch 27 issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the City of Lapu-Lapu to stop their agents from demolishing the establishments of businessman Efrain Pelaez Jr. I call this a temporary respite or temporary justice for Jun Pelaez!

But while the RTC held the city from implementing its demolition order, Lapu-Lapu City’s private lawyer Richard Sison merely quipped, “Mr. Pelaez can celebrate if he wants to but the celebration is not permanent as the TRO is only good for 20 days.” From this, I reckon that Mayor Radaza’s demolition team was merely given a 20 day respite and on the 21st day, they will move and destroy the establishments of Pelaez.

Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza has overstepped his boundaries. These establishments were constructed long before Mr. Radaza became mayor; hence Mr. Pelaez always got a Mayors’ permit. But getting one from Mayor Radaza these days is like letting a camel pass through the eye of a needle. So where can people like Mr. Pelaez seek redress? Only through our Justice system, which we all know is very slow to move. Let’s hope that our present crop of judges would look into this case with a keener eye and move swiftly, otherwise Justice might be denied.

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Just when we thought we’ve learned all the dark and stark secrets during our Martial Law years, then came that article from the Inquirer last Thursday that the 1930’s mansion in Arlequi where then Pres. Cory Aquino (former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos also lived there) decided to stay because she refused to live at the Malacañang Palace was apparently seized by Malacañang guards loyal to the Marcoses where in the dead of night, the family of Tarsila Laperal-Mendoza were kicked out of their mansion with only the clothes on their backs.

Finally, after a 32-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ordered Malacañang to return the 4,924 square meter property to its rightful owners and compensation was pegged at P7 million. Apparently Judge Vicente Hidalgo of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) awarded Mendoza P1.48 billion in rent and P143.6 million in just compensation but the Supreme Court found this to be excessive. Hence the amount of compensation given was only P7 million. If you ask me, for all those 32 years in court, Justice was denied the Mendoza family! Sure, one billion may be excessive, but P7 million is also too miniscule and not really a just compensation where government forcibly took away someone’s domicile in the dead of night!

It is sad that, despite Tita Cory’s pontificating about her taking the moral high ground, she still ended up living in a house that was forcibly taken from its rightful owners. I’m sure that she must have learned about this injustice done to the Mendoza family and was probably told that it was still in court, yet he still allowed her family to stay in that mansion during her years as President. We only learned about this last Thursday. It just makes me sad that such an ugly incident happened during the Marcos years, which could have been resolved when Tita Cory took over Malacañang. Justice was obviously forgotten by the very woman who came to power demanding justice for Ninoy, justice for all!