Filipinos may be harshly judging the West-of-the-Pecos brand of “justice” meted out to Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog using Starbucks hipsteratti standards today — because that is the easy and politically-correct thing to think and do. But, see, sometimes a bit of thinking outside of the square is called for, specially in this instance when all the “experts” and latte-sipping “influencers” are, in unison, singing off the same inbred liberal song book.
Recall that the Ampatuans of Maguindanao also led a lavish lifestyle and lived in enormous mansions for many years while keeping the town natives docile on a diet of breadcrumbs thrown over their perimeter walls every now and then. They struck big time in 2009 and left 57 people dead before the state got to them — an atrocity since known as the “Maguindanao Massacre”. Following that tragedy it becomes easy in hindsight to conclude that the Ampatuans should have been given the same lead poisoning treatment Parojinog was feted with and, following that logic, 57 innocent people would still be alive today.
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Hindsight, it seems, makes people think in a manner inconsistent with the hipster outrage fads they launch when said hindsight is not available. Ozamiz is fundamentally no different to Maguindanao — both are municipalities populated by a bunch of docile peasants kept happy and silent blanketed underneath a warlord clan’s “protection” racket. Typical. The status quos in both of these fiefdoms are, suffice to say, fundamentally the same.
Had the Maguindanao Massacre not happened, Maguindanao’s peasants would today be singing praises to their lords on whose largesse they feast on year round. Had the Ampatuan mansions been aerial bombed or the entire clan gunned down in a “police operation gone wrong” in, say, 2008 (thereby preventing a 2009 massacre that would then never happen), the same clique of “activists” would be issuing the same slogans today and lamenting the Ampatuans’ “human rights” violated in that hypothetical incidence of military or police brutality.
Perhaps then, somewhere in a parallel universe that will now never happen, there’d be a “2018 Ozamiz Massacre” in which, say, 100 people were gunned down and buried with a rusty old backhoe. Let’s say 80 of these people were “media practitioners” for extra effect. (Media people are special in the Philippines’ “activist” circles, see.) It would then be easy to imagine the chatterati erupting in a chorus of hipster outrage rhetoric in a Back to the Future scenario in 2018, with many voices tweeting out wishful thinking that 80 “media practitioners” (never mind the 20 ordinary schmoes) would be alive had the Parojinogs of Ozamiz been gotten to by the police first.
Then come back from that future to 2017. The imagined parallel universe of Ampatuans being “victims” of police brutality in 2008 and the 2009 Maguindanao Massacre, as a result of that, never happening is playing out as an incarnation in Ozamiz today. Fact is, who’s to say that the Parojinogs do not have it in them to be as murderous on the same scale as the Ampatuans? All the ingredients are there: a multi-million peso gravy train of money and a clan of crooks willing to do anything to keep it chugging. In short, Ozamiz under the shadow of the Parojinogs was a Massacre Central waiting to happen. It’s just that the state got to the future perps first.
Just as interesting, in fact, is the same ol’ evidence-in-hindsight emerging and getting long overdue profile now — the lavish lifestyle of Vice Mayor Nova Princess Parojinog-Echavez and images of her Hermes handbags now going viral that, according to Bobit S. Avila in a PhilStar report, would “shame former First Lady Imelda Marcos”.
So the same media circus that fed on the LA LA lifestyle of pork barrel fortune heiress Jeane Lim Napoles in 2013 now feasts on the former baroness of Ozamiz in 2017. In this day and age of social media, it then becomes quite easy to pre-empt these template after-the-fact outrage fads. There are, after all, many other scions, spouses, and extended family members of warlords, clan patriarchs, and even high-ranking government executives who routinely exhibit their European vacations and carry-home haul of branded leather products on social media. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s fancy European vacations and lots of selfies of fashionista millennials spending daddy’s dough, there’s likely to be dirty money.
One wonders why there is even a need to spend a lot on bricks-and-mortar intel to track down “narco-politicians” when armies of amateur investigators armed with Facebook and Twitter accounts trawling the Net for incriminating selfies would suffice. But when it comes to acting on that intel, there is still a need for good old-fashioned arrest warrants, some hefty firepower slung on the shoulders of uniformed men, and a bit of law-and-order West of the Pecos to boot.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
IF the writer’s at GRP agree that the Main-Stream Media in the Philippines is Doctored to present the ‘Yellow’ agenda, OR ANY AGENDA..it can be stated that what anyone reads in the MSM is DUBIOUS at best. I thik it is FAKE or DOCTORED and NONE OF WHAT IS IN THE MSM in the country can be believed. So, if none of what is stated in the MainStream Media can be believed then it can be surmised that what is behind the MURDER of the Mayor and his Wife is certainly NOT being reported in the Media.
Now that said, SO WHAT…is GRP de-volving to the point that it no longer believes in the rule of law? That the Constitution is no longer the law of the Land? That ‘DUE PROCESS’ is no longer a corner-stone of the Democracy that is supposed to be the right of every citizen:Rich or Poor?
Sadly, Rodrigo Duterte has thrown the ‘DUE PROCESS’ clause of the Constitution in the garbage and it NO LONGER EXISTS in the country. Over 7,000 people have been murdered in the country in the past 16 months and ll of them were denied a trial. If hey had received a trial and found guilty they would have been sentenced to probation or a few years at most in a Federal Penitentiary.
SO, is the Constitution no longer in effect? It appears to be that way, the killing of the Mayor and his wife is spun in the media that the guy was crooked and it will be used as an excuse to deny the Man and his dead wife what should have been the his Constitutionally guaranteed ‘CIVIL RIGHTS’ (NOT ‘HUMAN RIGHST DUHMEE’s) RIGHT.
The QUESTION should NOT even be asked. Even if the guy is a THIEF he was suppossed to be entitled to ‘DUE PROCESS’, the right toi a trial and the right to confront his accusser’s and that right was denied him, it is a fact. Anyone that thinks this is justice delivered is severely handicapped or doesn’t realize what is really happening in the country, which is not a surprise. The POLITICINS ARE LL CROOKS , SO WHY STOP AT THIS GUY? KILL THEM ALL RIGHT ?
For this reason ,and many others, it is a safe assumption to state that the Philippines is hopelessly FUCKED and anyone that wants to live better life should get out of that HELL-HOLE and go to North-Western Europe where people live really good lives.
We are now descending to being a Narco country, with Narco Politics. Mexico and Columbia are like that country…The Politicians are in the pockets of Drug Cartel. Judges, Police, Prosecutors, etc…are bought with Drug money. The Mexican Army became the Mexican Police, because the Police is too corrupt…
Human Rights ,,,what Human Rights ? We also have Human Rights, not to be hooked by the illegal drug Shabu, sold by the Leila de Lima, Mar Roxas, Aquino Drug Cartel…
It is War already against these Drug Lords…exterminate these vermin of our society ! They are like cockroaches !
who said the constitution is not in effect? it is in effect and what we see now is the laws in the yellow’s 87 constitution.
… the luisita and mendiola massacre, proliferation of drugs, corruption and terrorism, those are all legal in the 87 constitution, so what’s the buzz?
Did you not see what I wrote, THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT IN EFFECT, if it were: The 7,000 murdered people would nit have been murdered. YOU, not surprisingly, do not even see what is right in front of you, that the Constitution has been suspended by Duterte’s “WAR’. Every single one of the 7,000 dea dpeople that Duterte has had a hand in murdering(“I’ll give you a medal…”) was entitled to a trial, but first an arrest.An arrest and and then a trial.
and BTW, when are those 7,000 medals going to be handed out?
The people of Ozamis City had cried that it was a rubout against their dear mayor who is a drug don, a modern day mafia boss that looks like he’d came from The Sopranos or The Godfather franchise. And surely is his people was been paid during last year’s election in order to get his support & win it just like those leftists who’d joined their protest against our president, Rodrigo Duterte as mentioned to this blog created by Ilda.
And where did he got the money to pay his supporters in his city & won the election last year? Where else, the drug money of course! And what kind of drugs that he sold it & where did he get it? SHABU & it came from China which was smuggled it here illegally courtesy of another corrupt mafia gang, The Bureau Of Customs (BOC) which is done by the previous administration of ABNoy.
And the plot thickens…
Whether or not it is whatever it is, the people’s clamor for the rule of law nowadays appears no longer as popularly getting relevant as it used to be. What should be legal and/or ought to be moral has changed with the times. In a democracy, some would say, it’s the tyranny of the popular/unpopular many!
What clearly hasn’t change is still the people’s apparent bandwagoning attitude from both camps (“Ninoy! Cory! Noynoying!”… “Duterte is right! I would die for my President!”). The driven perspective of acceptance of things still tend to be selective or dependent or swayed on to who holds the majority in public opinion and who commands greater popularity share. This thinking has been the norm then as now. Like cheerleaders, everyone will always be ready to support, rally and identify with the winners and very much to whom is in power for the time being.
Of course whether or not this somewhat tard attitude of the people towards the popularity and/or notoriety of their leaders will be or ought to be the rightful choice of action, even if arrived at with much or less personal thinking, will only be justified as well as prove them right by the actual realization of their leader’s objective in the end.
IF any of you believe that Duterte is going to keep his word, when and where EXACTLY are those 7,000 medas being handed out? All he had to do was say “I’ll give you a meadl…’ and Filipino’s jump to the ready and start shooting their fellow Filipino’s like dogs in the streets, and then do not even have the courage to take Duterte up on his word/offer…SO WHERE ARE THOSE MEDALS ANYWAY ? HUH ?
IDC what anyone says: Filipino’s are idiots.
You always bringing up the “7’000” It’s obvious that you heard it from Leni Robredo’s video addressing the UN without any credible evidence, you shoudn’t take that fake VP’s words seriously because it’s very obvious that she did it to overthrow Duterte and take his seat as a president.
Before people call “rubout,” like with the Kuratong Baleleng back then, they should be reminded that the vice mayor was taken alive. Whatever she reveals, hopefully it can be used to really bring crime down.
@benign0 If you think that there’ll be an Ozamiz Massacre that will happen next year by the Parojinog political clans just like what it did to the Maguindanao massacre, eight years ago, well it looks like it happened as early as this year! Take a look at this latest news on that city right now as what I’d found on yahoo.com, Excavation begins on alleged “mass grave” of Parojinog family in Ozamiz City.
Here’s another one on the news coming from ABIAS-CBN of a possible MASS GRAVE that had been found in Ozamiz City.
So CHR where are you now? Probably you’re busy on protecting the Parojinog clans instead of protecting the innocent lives that are victims of their evil crimes & schemes like selling illegal drugs, corruption & salvage.
There’s a difference between thinking you can’t be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.
It’s just high-profile tokhang, and it can be lawfully done. it’s just that nobody was willing to go after these highly-placed scumbags in society. The resulting death is part of the territory. The ones mainly making a big deal out of it are their kind in politics and their cohorts in media.