Slow justice for the powerful political elite

It's the 8th birthday of my second grandchild Kirsten Erica “Keena” Avila Tequillo and she has grown into a fine young lady, who often speaks with an English accent thanks to her previous school. I can only say that it is a great blessing for us grandparents to be with our grandchildren and converse with them like adults. When we were small children, our grandparents never talked with us because in those old days, children were meant to be seen, not heard. Thanks to this Internet generation, our grandchildren often ask us questions that we can't even answer. Happy birthday my dear Keena, I can't wait when you grow up to be a teenager. God bless you always.

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Exactly 68 years ago, the City of Nagasaki was bombed with another nuclear bomb called “Fat Man,”which was equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. I'm writing about the bombing of Nagasaki because I've always been writing about the bombing of Hiroshima which also commemorated its 68th year last Aug. 6. Since I was blessed with my brother-in-law Yuki and Adela Avila-Kono, who showed me around Hiroshima a few years ago, it has changed my perspective about nuclear war, that it should be prevented as much as possible. It is for this reason why we write these stories about history so that people won't forget about the horrors of war.

Few people know that Nagasaki is the most Catholic of all the cities of Japan. Yet, it suffered this nuclear holocaust. To think, Nagasaki was not the primary target of the US Air Force. Their main target was the City of Kokura, Niigata and Kyoto. But I gathered from Wikipedia that Kyoto was stricken off the target list by US Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson who admired the City of Kyoto as he spent his honeymoon there. Kyoto was the old Japanese Capital and it was right for the Americans to take it off their target list not only because of its natural beauty, but also because of its ancient wooden temples.

There were undisputed facts about the Nagasaki bombings that four Jesuit priest who were inside the 15-kilometer radius of the blast zone survived the bombing, while people who were 10 times further away were obliterated. Fifteen years after this nuclear holocaust in Nagasaki, these same Jesuit priests were still alive, while most of the survivors of that bombing died due to the exposure of radiation. One of the priests, Fr. Hubert Schiffer, was examined 200 times and had no traces of radiation.

There was no doubt that these priests were spared by a miracle, more so that nine days later, on the Feast of the Assumption on Aug.15, 1945, World War II finally ended with the surrender of Japan. For us in Cebu, the Japanese surrendered in Barangay Ilihan on August 29, 1945.

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It's been 10 years since the Cebu media exposed the misdoings of Congresswoman Clavel Asas Martinez for the alleged transfer of part of her pork barrel supposedly earmarked for the Girl Scouts of the Philippines (GSP-Cebu) Council to her personal account. Why this case taken so long is clear and visible proof that there is injustice in this country even after the EDSA People's Power Revolt.

We've always known that there is swift justice for the poor, who when they are issued a warrant of arrest, are either caught and thrown to jail or if they elude arrest, they are considered fugitives of the law. But then there is also justice for the rich and powerful. We've already known how fugitive Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson went into hiding for many months, until there was a new government friendly to him and soon, he returned and was immediately installed as Senator of the land.

I call these people as the “political elite” who literally hijacked the EDSA People's Power Revolt. Many of them were part and parcel of the hated Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) and since we don't have laws against political butterflies they ingratiated themselves to the powers that be. This is why the Martinez clan has ruled Bogo for more than 30 years and are still powerful even today, because they conveniently took their oath as members of the ruling Liberal Party (LP).

But even our slow, snail-paced justice system has caught up with former Congresswoman Clavel Asas Martinez and the other day, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) operatives went out to serve her arrest warrant, as well as that of her son, Bogo City Mayor Tining Martinez. But they obviously went into hiding, perhaps someone warned them that the NBI would arrest her. Of course they say that these arrest warrants were “suspended”. If so, was the NBI misinformed or there really was no suspension? Meanwhile, how should we deal with these powerful political people who are eluding the arrest warrant? In my book, we should consider them as fugitives.

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