Ghosts of Mamasapano upon Noynoy
If Dr. Christine Cempron felt that her husband was killed twice by the government for whom he made the supreme sacrifice, you cannot blame her. Dr. Cempron is the widow of PO2 Romeo Cempron, one of the 44 Philippine National Police Special Action Force commandos who were killed in action last January 25 in an operation meant to get two wanted international terrorists being coddled in Mamasapano, Maguindanao by the MILF, with whom the government is talking peace.
Sometime last week, Dr. Cempron was informed by the PNP that her husband was to be posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor, this country's highest honor for bravery. She was asked to be in Manila on August 7 to receive the award, to be given during the 114th anniversary of the PNP, and that she was to come in Filipiniana attire because the president himself will be handing out the awards.
Dr. Cempron, like all the other SAF 44 widows and surviving relatives and loved ones, are still hurting not only from the great tragedy that befell their lives but perhaps more so from the apparent indifference and apathy the president has shown throughout most of the entire incident, both during and in the days that followed what has come to be one of the most emotionally charged events in this nation.
So you can just imagine the added hurt, and the insult to go with the pain, when she was told while already in Manila that her husband would no longer be among those to be awarded. The limp excuse that came with the news about the cruel turn of events was that the Medal of Valor was such a high award it had to be reviewed and that the review is not over yet.
Now, you can tell that to anyone, but not to Christine Cempron. Christine Cempron is a professional. She is a licensed doctor of medicine. If she can tell if a headache is only from stress or from something else, she sure as hell can tell the truth from a lie. And it was clear to Dr. Christine Cempron that someone was lying, because she and the other widows have been consistently lied to before in relation to the Mamasapano incident.
Now she is being lied to again. And it could not have been the PNP because it was the PNP that enthusiastically informed her that PO2 Romeo Cempron would be posthumously awarded, along with Superintendent Raymundo Train, the lone survivor from the SAF unit that first went in to engage the terrorists. You can accuse the PNP of many things, but you cannot expect it to lie and play a cruel joke on the widow of one of its own.
Common sense tells us that when you start inviting people, everything is already all ironed out and ready. So, along with Dr. Christine, no Filipino in his right mind would buy the story that the award was still being reviewed when in fact the list of awardees had already been made up and printed and all the invitations sent out.
Evidently, something came up to subsequently change the entire complexion of the story. According to one newspaper story, it was the Presidential Management Staff that ordered the names of Cempron and Train removed from the list of awardees as the president did not want to bring back memories of the Mamasapano incident. Is Noynoy Aquino being haunted by the ghosts of Mamasapano?
If so, then it serves Noynoy Aquino right. The blood of the SAF 44 is in his hands. And nothing in his five years in office has tested him as a leader and as a person more seriously than the Mamasapano incident. And no test in that span of time has caused him to fail so miserably than this one. He was tested in all aspects of leadership and character as a person and he passed in none of them.
From the very first day that he stepped into the Mamasapano picture until the day he handed out awards during the PNP anniversary with the names of Cempron and Train already scratched out, Noynoy Aquino exhibited everything that is wrong with him as a leader and as a person. If it is any consolation to anyone, the Mamasapano incident single-handedly exposed Noynoy and his "daang matuwid" as a sham.
From surreptitiously putting a suspended buddy in charge of Mamasapano, to holding back reinforcements that could have saved the lives of the SAF 44 in favor of saving a peace deal that would give up so much of Mindanao to the MILF, to lying and covering up afterward, to blaming scapegoats and refusing to own the blame, to refusing to meet the bodies of the slain heroes and instead cavorting in a newly opened foreign car facility, and now this. How "baluktot" indeed is "daang matuwid!"
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