I'M TRYING to be an adult about all this. No, make that, I'm trying to be enlightened about this. Except that... bile keeps rising up my throat.
You would taste bile as well if you realize that we are being played with again, and they have successfully made us draw that line once again, on our own, against those who do not think the way we do.
This is about Kian.
Just like all of you, I rage at how Kian was killed. The details that trickled in later made that rage burn even hotter.
But even hotter is my rage against those who have appropriated Kian's death as their own special turf for outrage, when those who continue to support President Rodrigo R. Duterte and have not apologized for voting for him, are not worthy of sharing their grief.
Kian's death does not make me lose my trust on the President and his very close lieutenants (very close, meaning, absolutely no member of both Houses) because in Kian's death I see the evil that politicians, who have been holding their national positions long before the President became president, are willing to exert extra effort for -- kidnapping among them.
In Kian's death, I witnesses how even colleagues in journalism act as if they who see nothing good about this government have the exclusive right to speak up about the boy in the same way that they expect us, through sheer association of profession, to believe that there are now 12,000 victims of extra judicial killings, because they say so. Some even go as far as tell is to our face that because we are Davao City journalists, we have been cowered to subservience since time immemorial.
Never before in my whole half century of existence have I been made to feel that nation-building is a sin worthy of being persecuted in Edsa, just as their placards -- I mean their rallyists -- in Edsa are implying.
I kept my peace, but not anymore.
The Philippines is the only country I have and I will not allow the greedy politicians and their cohorts in journalism destroy this just as they are doing their very best to do now.
We're not perfect, yes. But through the decades, we Dabawenyos have entrusted our city to leaders who can stand up to do the right thing -- including landing a wallop on a court sheriff because he refused to grant a two-hour stay in the demolition of squatter houses.
True, there are scalawags among the leaders; like in all professions there are the thieves and the corrupt. We have our share. But they are not allowed to continue with their ways. They have to shape up, and Davao journalists take that role of calling out these politicians, seriously.
One thing we are sure of, crime and criminal syndicates do not exist in a vacuum and they will fight with everything they have to protect their very source of wealth. They can even kill --- many or a few, very old or very young -- just to keep the business going.
I will play no part in that. And so I grieve for Kian in private, where no one else [politicians, journalists, criminal syndicates, their minions, and the self-righteous] can use me.
saestremera@gmail.com
