Justice

         First day of school in law school and Prof. Haydee Yorac tells her class: “Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall,” which was her favorite saying.   

           Today, the court will promulgate the decision in People vs. Carpentier, Smith, et al, for rape, or what the press calls the
Subic rape case. The street protestors have been quoted in the media as saying that they have pompoms with them to celebrate a guilty verdict ,and protests in case of an acquittal.         

            The people’s organizations who supported the complainant in this case should be acknowledged and congratulated because  were it not for their support, the complainant might have faltered;  there might have been less public attention,  that is all-necessary when you are up against powerful interests.      

               But they miss the point  when they say they are prepared with their pompoms and cheerleaders’ accessories in case of a guilty verdict.                     

        Whether the verdict is guilty or not, the accused will never be punished here. The Philippines will never have custody of any American soldier convicted of a crime within Philippine territory; our criminal justice system will never be applicable to foreign soldiers sojourning in the country under the Visiting Forces Agreement.              

            This was not a lesson in justice. There was never any.                             This was a lesson in the unequal relations between the Philippines and the United States.        

            This was a continuing lesson in  the continued subservience of the Philippines to U.S. foreign policy.              

         And this  is a lesson that might never be learned by this generation if we continue to fail to assert our right to be treated as a sovereign country.         

           While the judge here should decide the case blind to color, race, and creed, and issue a verdict based solely on the evidence; there was never a test here of the criminal justice system because from the beginning, that system was never applied to the American soldiers, when the accused were never detained in a Philippine jail and subjected to bail hearings while under detention, a process that any person accused of a capital offense in this country has to undergo.                            There will never be any punishment for those found  guilty,  and no justice for our countrymen as long as the legislators, the executive branch, the Supreme Court, and the nation,  fail to see that the unequal relations established under the Visiting Forces Agreement need to be reviewed. There were never any tests here and we continue to be the little brown American brothers and sisters that we have always been, in the last one hundred years.                         

            Until there is equal treatment for those accused and  those found guilty, justice will not be done because the superpowers might fall.                 (in the interest of full disclosure, again, please see blog entry entitled “Disclosures”. thanks.)