Legend Falling

Jose “Pinggot” Zulueta. Dekada. Published with express permission from the artist (thanks much!). Asinta images. Right-clicked from www.asinta.netfirms.com

 

      The folkloric Joker Arroyo invoked his own legend as human rights lawyer during the Marcos era, trumpeted his  vaunted courage during that resistance, and proceeded to browbeat the witness, Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, who was equipped with nothing but his traumatic experience  a week ago in the hands of agents of the state, and his retelling, coming out of it alive and reliving it again, was enough; his remembering came cascading again and it was enough  to shatter the myth that was Joker Arroyo, and the moral of Joker’s  story was: Wait for the historians to tell your legend instead of announcing it time and again else drop with a thud which was the sound of Joker falling, yesterday.                 

       Joker said “Do not trifle with the great writs of liberty…do not cheapen them….” Well, maybe PNP Senior Supt. Paul Mascariñas and his men, after bringing a shaken Jun Lozada at the La Salle dormitory should have stopped hovering around him  and trifling with his right to be secure in  his person; maybe they should have stopped taking him away again and  removing him from the dormitory and trifling with his liberty; maybe they should have stopped making him and his sister sign false affidavits with the use of intimidation, trifling with their free consent.               

            It was at that time when Mascariñas  and his men would not leave them alone and would not stop trifling with their rights that his wife and siblings signed and filed the petitions for the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and writ of amparo, when Jun Lozada was removed from the dormitory and still in the hands of his captors. While the petition for the writ of habeas corpus today may be moot and academic, are the petitioners  expected to just dust their shoulders and consider it  enough consolation that at least the petitioners’ husband/sibling was returned alive? When you had been violated,  and  had survived the transgression, do you just charge it to experience  and “move on”?                 

          Is this how we wrested our liberties from the previous dictatorship?               

        If they have time, maybe the lawyers and their client can think of amending their petitions to include a prayer to declare the forcible taking of Jun Lozada as illegal and unconstitutional,  without prejudice to the filing of criminal actions in better times under a professional and just Department of Justice and Ombudsman.               

     We’re glad we did not grow up to be like Joker: whenever people ask: “How were you able to do that,” we tell them: “It wasn’t us, it was our clients; it had been our privilege to represent them.”