About 90% of Filipinos were happy when the American soldier convicted of raping a Filipina at a nightclub near the former US naval base Subic was escorted out of the Makati Regional Trial Court premises to be taken straight to jail right after the judge delivered the guilty verdict.
We all thought that he was guilty. And we all believed that he, a soldier of the great United States of America nation, deserves punishment.
Well, yeah sure, I believe he does.
I believe that when you cannot control your lasciviousness to the point that you
violate another human being and his/her body, will and freedom,
you really have to go somewhere where you feel punished and shamed.
In medieval times, depending on where you lived,
it might be a torture house. In modern society,
it’s a prison or long-term detention center.
Sometimes, it’s the front-end of a firing
squad or the needle of a lethal injection, again depending
on the legal system in force and applied.
And if ever, having been transferred to an American
facility seems to be an escape for him, then well,
those of us who believe in God must now know that
eventually justice shall catch up with him.
What is found bewildering, however, is the extremely
high level of outrage, animosity and anger at this convicted rapist?
Now just a minute. Before you suddenly sway your
accusing eyebrows towards this author, can you kindly (
believe it or not, this is for your own sake) ask yourself these questions:
• How many of our own
locally bred made-in-the-Philippines
proudly full-fledged
rapists escape conviction
because they have many money, power and influence?
So why the sudden big fuss over one single rapist (be he
a soldier,
an American or whatever)?
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• We hate the scenario where we had to “surrender”
the soldier to American hands, but how many of us “surrender”
our laws to the forceful (and scary?) persuasion of the influence peddlers
of Filipino society?
• While we claim to hate it when foreigners touch our women
in a forceful manner, how many of our women are exported
as GRO’s anyway everyday?
• We claim to hate rapists and we made prostitution illegal. Fine.
But are our karaoke nightclubs really just for “singing”?
Are our massage parlors really just for those wanting to physically,
medically and therapeutically rid themselves of a backache? Well, I
don’t see any big owner of “entertainment” clubs or congressmen
pedophiles arrested. Do you? Okay, perhaps when our country is
blessed with the occasional blissful shower of justice,
we get to see a few exceptions like the names of Jalosjos
and Mayor Sanchez. But they’re among the very rare and few.
Meanwhile, as to foreign rapists, wow, yes, arrest them all!
Finally, while the American soldier got to witness, even if just for a while,
the beauty of Filipino corruption as manifested in the very overcrowded
ugly jails and penal facilities, I need to ask one last question for now.
If we had a jury system instead of a single judge system, and if Keanna
Reeves – the high-class prostitute celebrity who was a popular
winner of Pinoy Big Brother – were among the jurors, would we
still have gotten a “GUILTY” verdict? Really?
Not “HOW MUCH,” or worse, “WHERE’S MY VISA”?
Little Ant
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