MANILA, Philippines - Most headlines this week featured a grieving patriarch, freedom for subversion suspects, and amnesty for soldiers who denounced government corruption and asked for reform in a different manner leading to near rebellion.
Bigger and bigger
The business and inside pages made reference to $15.46 B sent to PHL by our overseas workers between January and October. For October alone dollar remittances was a record $1.67 B, higher by 9.3 percent than last year's $1.53 B for the same month. The remittances for ten months represent an increase of 7.9 percent over receipts for the same period in 2009.
There's no projection of total remittances for November and December.
In 2009, our overseas workers contributed $17.3 B, and the remaining two months may yet top last year's record by a bigger increase.
Our yearly dollar bills
With the OFW dollars meeting our yearly bills for petroleum, rice, steel, coal, cotton materials, medicines, canned and frozen meat, and many more is somewhat easy. The dollars saved and sent by fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters help strengthen the Filipino family for education, healthcare, food, and other basic needs.
Skill and profession
Our country's luck lies in our skilled and professional workers deployed in the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, UK, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Italy, Germany, and Norway.
In a strict sense we can proudly say that our largest export - manpower - is not affected by favorable or unfavorable changes in the economy.
Picture of grief
Dr. Lauro Vizconde is now grieving over two cases of extreme bad luck in his life and family: 1) the murder of his wife Estrelita and daughters Carmela and Jennifer in 1991, 2) acquittal by the Supreme Court of all suspects in three murders who were convicted by the RTC trial judge.
Survey result?
If SWS has a way of getting general views on the subject the survey result may dumbfound the lawyers, doctors, active and retired judges, law enforcers, law students, bar flunkers, law professors, practitioners, and many more.
TV/radio anchors have interviewed the mainstream population - drivers, their passengers, vendors, etc. - and most of them took the side of Lauro, about his search/struggle for justice of 19 years, about his advocacy called Volunteers Against Corruption and Crimes (VACC) and about his courage and sufferings for so long and without letup.
New gathering of evidence
The move to have an entirely new investigation of the Vizconde murders faces a blank wall - finding new witnesses, new documents, new motives. But the most dreadful prospect is prescription in the Penal Code - murder prescribes after 20 years in the absence of charges filed.
View of a retired trial judge
Was there a miscarriage of justice at the long trial? According to retired Justice Manuel Pamaran, a former trial judge for years, witnesses are observed by the trial judge, face to face, during direct and cross examination and at a closer range on the stand, say three to four meters from the judge's chair.
Close enough
Court rooms in Metro Manila can be called topsy-turvy (disorderly) and the witness stand to the left/right of the judges leaves an unmistakable impression - that judges can easily hear and see the witness' face, demeanor and tell-tale shades of his personality - pale, hungry, angry, robust, honest, a congenital liar, or militant, or subversive. Most journalists who don't see witnesses in action and at closer range may only deal with theories about their being unreliable or lying through their teeth.
The simple truth
If there's a new investigation it does not follow it will give better evidence for conviction that won't be reversed on appeal.
The simple doubt among lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and law enforcers may be reduced to a plain truth - it's doubly hard to gather evidence for murder to make it before prescription in June, 2011.
Worse, the result could end in a third extreme bad luck to Lauro. (Comments are welcome at roming@pefianco.com).
