Where Is The Love?
For the Kingdom
of God does not consist in talk but
in power. ( 1 Cor 4:20)
How much do we love our country and
her people? Is following the Impeachment trial a sign of one’s love or is it
more a test of one’s tolerance of political grandstanding and patience for the
predictably funeral pace of a technicality-driven or delayed justice system?
I listened
to a portion of the Impeachment trial yesterday. I caught the exchange between
a member of the prosecution and a senator-judge. The Senator-judge who
obviously knew her law repeatedly referred to legal concepts and their
corresponding legal nomenclature. She did this with such speed that the
prosecution-lawyer was barely able to answer a question while another question
was already being fired at him. Whenever the prosecution-lawyer paused and was
at a lost for answers, he was immediately evaluated and given a grade. It was
both hilarious and rather pathetic. Since I could not see gestures and faces as I
was just listening to a radio broadcast, I missed the added feature of reading
and interpreting body language.
The whole
exercise on the 16th day of the Impeachment Trial and a day before
Valentine’s made me ask the question, “Where is the love?” How much genuine
love of God, neighbor and country propels people on the Impeachment court? I
tried listening not only with my ears but with my heart. I sometimes heard
nothing more than linguistic noise. The noise was sometimes quite impressive
laying bare the erudition and articulateness of persons but also quite
disappointing if not disturbing because of the lack of heart and soul.
We will
celebrate Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Let us celebrate it in a different way by
inviting everyone to love more and in a different way. Tomorrow morning at around
9:00 am various groups and individuals will gather at the corner of T.M. Kalaw
and Taft avenue to warm up for A Love Run for the Mother
Land. It may even be raining
tomorrow as it is raining at this very moment but if there is love, the rain
cannot dampen this primordial force in our lives. But it will not be the usual
romantic love on Valentine’s day.
There is
the on-going debate as to who is violating the constitution by subpoenaing the
peso and dollar bank accounts of the Chief Justice to the Senate. The
prosecution added to the debate by filing a Temporary Restraining Order against
the subpoena of the Chief Justice’s dollar account. The Senate voted 13-8 in
favor of the TRO. Who then is higher and more powerful than the other two
branches of government? The Supreme Court? The Senate? Or Malacanang?
For me this
is not the fundamental question. Thanks to Valentine’s Day, we may ask who
among the SC justices truly love the country, the people, especially the poor, truth
and justice and their source, the Almighty God? Who are beginning to show their
real color by showing in not too subtle ways that they really love self more
than anything else? Money whether in pesos or dollars is a good indicator of
one’s love. Certainly it is not only the Chief Justice who is suspected to love
self and money. How about the president who appointed him? Since the
Impeachment Trial, she has become invisible. People seem to have forgotten her.
But she and her cohorts should not be forgotten and ignored.
As to the
question which is the highest of the three, there actually is a fourth reality,
the Sovereign People of the Republic. How easily those who have ascended the
heights of power and position forget that all power rests and derives from the
people. It is time to remember and to assert this. Run, run, run for our people
on Valentine’s Day.
(February 14, 2012
9 a.m. Assembly at T.M. Kalaw cor. Taft, 10:00
a.m. Run to Supreme Court, Department of Justice and Senate of the Philippines)
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