Reactions: How many more will have to die?

MACABRE: As expected, my Postscript last Sunday elicited zealous reactions when I asked: “How many more people will have to die, or be driven to suicide, to satisfy the hounds scavenging for evidence that will put former President Gloria Arroyo behind bars?”

Citing the suicides of Gen. Angelo Reyes and DBP lawyer Benjamin Pinpin, collateral damage of the ongoing anti-graft campaign, Postscript remarked:

“One gets an eerie feeling from this macabre turn of events that the administration’s campaign, ostensibly a search for the ‘truth,’ could claim more lives.”

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FEEDBACK: We here give preference to the e-mail (slightly edited to fit) of those who did not go along with the column’s drift — and only when they gave their full names and contact addresses:

• Agapito holgado <[email protected]>:

 “Your analysis of Noy’s actions, decisions, appointments or comments is biased. Take for instance the suicides of Gen. Reyes and Pinpin. Do you imply that because of the investigations by various departments under the office of the President, he is to be blamed for those suicides? If those people are not guilty or not involved in shady deals, and they had nothing to hide, why would they take their own lives? If they are not sane enough to face their accusers and courageous enough to tell the truth about their supposed illicit transactions, maybe they should really kill themselves and reduce the number of the thousands of people involved in anomalies under the previous administration. And your seeming deep sympathy toward the ex-president, is unusual. Can you not discuss your point in such a way that would convey a balanced view of what is happening?”

• Fernando Anluagui <[email protected]>: “You nor I is not the right person to judge that the untimely death of the late Atty. B. Pinpin of the DBP legal staff was an offshoot of the witch hunt of the present government as what you have surmised. Let the proper Senate/congressional panels and/or the proper court be the appropriate venue to ferret out the truth and those found culpable of wrongdoing meted with proper punishment. But do not assume that all these exposé now being investigated are being carried out to pin down former PGMA, which I think have conditioned your subjective mind. You have also mentioned the collateral damage which caused the suicide of the late Gen. Angelo Reyes, another victim of your imagined witch hunt. His death was a tragic event which no one is to blame but himself. He was made to decide and prove himself to be a cavalier but he decided to have an easy way out to keep the omerta of his group.”

• Emmanuel Verzosa <[email protected]>: “So what if everybody connected with the corrupt Arroyos will die. We don’t care. Reyes and Pinpin are cowards and they died in vain. They could have said a mouthful about the Arroyos and cohorts. Their revelations could have expedited the probe of your kababayan. I hope you are not one of them.”

• Johnny Lin <[email protected] >: “Interesting conclusion that you associated the suicides of Reyes and Pinpin with the obsession of current administration to pin down Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. These two men killed themselves for reasons only they know related to their conscience which could be either guilty or not guilty to the charges accused on them. Were you suggesting that they committed suicide because their conscience dictated that they have to protect GMA? If that were the reason they were nitwits! Angelo Reyes was accused of receiving P50 million ‘pabaon,’ an apparent old practice since early ’90s when GMA was not yet elected senator, while Pinpin was asked to explain his knowledge on a questionable loan Roberto Ongpin, a well known businessman, received from DBP. The charges on them were distantly connected to the supposed anomalies associated with GMA by any stretch of imagination.”

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ANOTHER NCT: The people of Minalin town in Pampanga are excited over the declaration by the National Museum on Aug. 27 of their old Santa Monica church as a National Cultural Treasure, the second NCT church in the province after the St. James church in Betis, Guagua town.

Minalin residents have been lending old photographs of how the church looked in the past and thus help in its restoration and the full appreciation of its architecture and history.

Architect Owen Francis S. Canlas, chair of the Commission on Cultural Heritage, Restoration and Conservation of the Santa Monica parish, said: “We would like to reconstruct the history of Minalin through old photographs and present how the church and the town looked in the past.”

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WHY SANTA MONICA?: The Minalin church was picked for several reasons: Its façade features a unique giant retablo influenced by Christian, Buddhist, Hinduist and animistic cultures. It is the only Roman Catholic church in the Philippines with four capilla posas (for outdoor rites) still intact. It owns an old painting depicting the Our Lady of Consolation giving the cords to Santa Monica and her son St. Augustine.

The church houses also a mural dated 1619 and shows an old map of the town, said to be the seat of the old Capampangan region.

A photograph of the burial procession of Antonio Tongol in 1979 showed the church’s side before it was renovated. Other photographs record a visit by Bishop Emilio A. Cinense in 1966, a wedding in 1948 showing the retablo mayor at the back of the altar, and a flood in 1993 that submerged the church by a meter after surviving the 1991 eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo.

The parish CCHRC, Mayor Arturo “Katoy” Naguit and his brother Florencio were among those who had worked for the declaration of Santa Monica church as a NCT.

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FOLLOWUP: Access past POSTSCRIPTs at www.manilamail.com. Follow this columnist at Twitter.com/FDPascual. E-mail feedback to [email protected]