Cebu 8

Thankfully, I got the full picture of what happened before somebody invented Cebu 8 and drilled the name into my consciousness. Or I wouldn't have realized it was just another story about a bunch of overzealous kids eager to test their rights against an equally overzealous security apparatus just as eager to test its muscle. I could have sworn it was another truly epic tale of real heroism. You know, like the SAF 44.

But young people getting ahead of themselves and getting into trouble? Epithets of note are for those who, like the noble 600, charge into the valley of death, with cannons to the left and right of them. But Cebu 8? What's that? Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree sound more pleasing, to the ear, as well as to perspective and propriety.

The anti-terrorism measure that has got the unfortunate kids so agitated and into trouble is nonexistent, or at least not yet. Their sacrifice was all for nothing. Even Duterte critic Antonio Carpio, the former associate justice who never seems to miss an opportunity to lambast the administration, had to pick his words carefully when he criticized the same measure.

But, of course Carpio, is not a college kid anymore. Much older and wiser, with a far superior grasp of the law and richer in experience in life's unassailable realities, Carpio's words were as deliberate as they were instructive: As soon as Duterte signs the bill, it can immediately be challenged before the Supreme Court.

What Carpio is actually saying, politely, to his fellow critics is that right now the anti-terror bill is just a bill. As a bill, all the provisions being objected to exist only on paper. Of course, Duterte is expected to sign it into law. But until he does, the law does not exist. Carpio did not want to use the word premature to describe the protests, but as a man used to deciding on the evidence, unless there is an object of protest, what is there to protest?

Besides, Carpio knows all laws are presumed to be good and regular and that any abuse thereof has to happen first and then proven. But all this is what separates Carpio from the careless and the gung-ho. Some protest when necessary, others protest for its own sake. Now you know why some are getting arrested and some are not. Battles are lost or won not on the basis of strength alone but in knowing when exactly to fight.

One hot and humid late afternoon two weeks ago here in Carigara, Leyte, where I am at present, I sat myself on a plastic monobloc chair one foot outside the gate of my wife's modest home. I was trying to catch some wayward breeze that might come. Instead a patrol car of the Carigara police came and the cop in the front passenger seat asked why I had no face mask on. I looked at him incredulously but decided not to test his authority.

The COVID-19 protocol says not to go out without a face mask. Any schoolboy sees it to mean going out somewhere and not when just sitting a foot outside the gate. Either the cop did not understand the protocol or was just having a bad day and wanted to take it out on me. With a smile on my face I moved the chair back a foot into the gate. On hindsight, I was 12 inches away from becoming Cebuano 1 in Leyte before the Cebu 8 came to be.