Luisa Posa-Dominado, spokesperson, SELDA, missing for five days.

 “Winnowing in the Wind” by John Dyer           

        She’s a bit frail, small-boned, 5 feet, small face and big glasses, big smile, they were early  at the airport a little after-lunch and have been waiting for me in their white pick-up and after the usual introduction brought me to a seaside restaurant where they fed me scallops, oysters, prawns, big crabs, fresh seaweeds, like any former activist and present-day activist, they’d done their homework — knew my weakness: seafood —  and in a moment we were in their office and I was pouring over their corporate papers, and that’s how I came to draft their affidavit-complaints against customers who had issued them dozens of bouncing checks. That was six years ago in  Panay. We met several times for those criminal complaints and got arrest warrants for those cases and even got a hold-departure order, they were small cases of bouncing checks that could easily be settled if the accused settled their accounts, which is the only interest of small-scale business people like herself.   Small-scale industry. Her name is Luisa Posa (she used her maiden name then), full name Luisa Posa-Dominado. She and her friends had been able to set up a cooperative and put up a sugar mill,  from grants from OxFam. They even supplied muscovado sugar, a sort of brown, fine, sugar, a lot more fragrant than white sugar, to the supermarkets in the cities. And since it was a cooperative, the returns that weren’t used to pay grants and upgrade equipment, were distributed to members. And that’s how,  they laughingly explained to me, they, former activists, became capitalists. She’s an ex-detainee, active in the protest movement during the Marcos years, was arrested and detained in 1989 with her baby daughter in tow, named “Maywan” because she was born on May 1.        

         She is still missing. She was abducted by armed men five days ago (April 12) together with her colleague Nilo Arado, after their vehicle, driven by Jose Ely Garachico, public information officer of Karapatan, was strafed with bullets. Garachico survived while Luisa Posa and Nilo Arado were taken.         

              When Bayan Muna first participated in the partylist elections, some of those who had helped Bayan Muna organize chapters in the islands were former activists, those who had “retired” from the movement and were going about their daily business of living. Her colleague in managing the sugar mill,  Siegfred Deduro, became one of the nominees of Bayan Muna in the first year that Bayan Muna participated in the partylist elections.              I don’t really know what happened here. Why they seized her. A few days ago, a friend told me that two sociology Ph.D students of U.P. were also seized, apparently based on old records from twenty years ago, that they were active in the protest movement against the Marcos dictatorship.       

        Marcos is long dead. When is this all going to end?               

                I know that the CIDG, based on experience, has the capability to identify culprits just based on a cartographic sketch. I know that they have a rogues’ gallery where they compare the carto sketch, then they show the witness the file of mug shots, and a witness would be able to identify the suspect. I know that the CIDG and people like Boogie Mendoza, because of their work, have assets and contacts in the underworld and among guns-for-hire, and can know, if something is afoot.                           

            They’re not just doing their job. Their Commander-in-Chief is not  specifically directing them to do their job and not giving any real instruction and deadline;  if the suspect is not from among their ranks  (like some satrap), they are able to produce results. But they’re not doing anything and witnesses who talk and describe and identify, get killed.                        It’s the end of another unfinished day and every day that a missing person is not found takes that person farther away from you. It’s the gentle quiet ones who are taken away from us.                            And everyday that insatiable people like Gloria and Mike Arroyo are allowed to stay in power one more day, is one more friend torn away from us.            

          Whoever took Luisa Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado, please just bring them back.