by Aurora Pijuan
The 11th of February and 71st birthday of our youngest sibling Sister Joseph Mary of the Religious of the Good Shepherd, was a thoroughly bad day for both Sister Joseph and myself. For more than ten hours we had to endure almost the same moral and spiritual sufferings of NBN-ZTE scandal witness Jun Lozada.
In fact I may have suffered nearly as acutely as Mr. Lozada, considering that two of my very few surviving friends and comrades during our crusade against the Marcos Martial Law tyranny, were inexplicably but obviously ringleaders in a conspiracy to discredit Mr. Lozada.
I am intimately familiar with the Lozadas’ hometown of Ligao City in Albay province. Many of its “native” families have been well known to me and my sister because we have deep parental and social roots in the adjacent town of Guinobatan, a mere ten kilometers from Ligao. And during our adolescent years, native Bicolanos whether from Camarines Sur, Albay or Sorsogon, knew practically everybody who was somebody.
And so whether in the one-horse and “anti-Intsik” Baao hometown of Joker Arroyo and the Bernas brothers, or in the 2-horse poblaciones of Ligao and Guinobatan, we knew more or less at what particular social, intellectual and moral levels prominent Bicolanos were situated. Incidentally up to this day, there is no “Intsik” business establishment that has ever thrived or even survived for long in Baao! If Francis Garchitorena were alive, he and Joaquin Bernas’ younger sibling Justino, would be spending endless hours tracing the whys and wherefores behind Joker Arroyo’s running wild against Ligao’s surprisingly intellectual and courageous whistleblower.
But my instant intellectual and moral admiration for Jun Lozada was not because of, but perhaps even inspite of his Ligao Chinese ancestry.
For Heaven knows that up and coming intellectual moral giants of AT LEAST POSSIBLY of the same mold as Jaime Cardinal Sin, Lorenzo Tañada Sr., and Ninoy Aquino, are now widely presumed to have vanished from our shores particularly in Bicolandia, given the nauseating moral and intellectual STENCH exhuded by a number of its most egregiously TRAPO local politicians.
And so I am sure that yesterday, wherever they were, these three aforementioned dear departed friends and crusading associates of mine, together with Soc Rodrigo and Bicolanos Ramon Diaz, Raul Roco, Francis Garchitorena and my own late Jesuit sibling, Fr. Toti Olaguer, must have all been cheering and praying for the vindication of Jun Lozada, and for the immediate moral conversion of Joker Arroyo and Lito Atienza.
For surely, on the basis of my departed friends’ ultimately authoritative moral dictionary, these latter two erstwhile moral luminaries, have unfortunately been mired deep in muck far, far worse than bad faith. And thus Joker and Lito are now IN BED with and entrapped in BAD, BAD company…