Clemency and forgiveness

Clemency and forgiveness

I was in my sophomore year at UP Diliman when Ninoy was gunned down on the tarmac of the then Manila International Airport. We know that his death set off public outrage that ended the Marcos regime in 1986. In my own little way, I blended my outcry with the enraged people by writing political essays about Ninoy’s death and posted them on the free walls of the UP College of Arts and Science building. I even shared copies to friends from different universities. However, I don’t remember making an essay about the ten soldiers who were jailed for the murder of Ninoy.

Now the soldiers are set free after being granted with clemency. There are lots of questions being asked. Is the granting of clemency to these soldiers tantamount to forgiving them? Does the death of Ninoy finally achieve justice? Do these soldiers deserve our forgiveness? Are we asked to forgive and forget? With these handful questions, I am inspired this time to write something about the fate of these ten soldiers.

There is a simple way of understanding justice and clemency by the use of a mathematical equation. If I borrow from a friend P100 then I return to him the same amount of P100 then that is justice. It is injustice if I only return P80.00 to my friend instead of P100.00. In other words, in an uneven equation it is injustice. From this notion, there is no justice when the ten soldiers were freed because they cannot restore or repay the harm to Ninoy their victim. These words in a song capture this point- “Kung ano ang iyong inutang ay siya ring kabayaran.” What about clemency? The concept of clemency is more aptly applied in the situation of the freed soldiers. Clemency welcomes an unbalanced scale of justice. If I can only pay the amount of P80.00 to my friend and my friend writes-off the remaining balance of P20.00 then it is done out ofmercy or clemency. Probably my friend sees the difficult situation I am in and he knows that I am incapable of paying the amount in full. In the case of the ten soldiers, the president sees fit to commute their sentence and grants executive clemency because of good behavior. In other words, they won’t serve their sentence in full in the national penitentiary because of clemency.

Do the ten soldiers deserve our forgiveness? Many say that only the victim or the wronged party can forgive his offenders. Nobody can substitute the victim in his granting of forgiveness to his offenders. But it is worth remembering the slogan “Hindi ka nag-iisa!” This bespeaks that Ninoy was not only the victim of the repressive regime but Filipinos all over were victims too. But forgiveness can only be meaningful and is generously deserved when there is admission of guilt on the part of the offenders. From the looks of it, we don’t find any feeling of remorse or regret on the part of the ten soldiers. They seem to have developed the talent of pretending. It is hard to forgive an offender when he disowns the responsibility of his wrongdoing.

Granting without admitting that they deserve our forgiveness given their admission of guilt, shall we forget what they did to Ninoy? Forgiving is not forgetting the wrongdoing. Forgiving is an empty word when we sidestep the wrongdoing. Ignoring what they did to Ninoy would only cheapen his martyrdom. His martyrdom would be nothing but a sheer street crime committed by crooks. His martyrdom would be bereft of any meaning and his words “the Filipino is worth dying for” would just be parts of an empty rhetoric.

Finally, though the ten soldiers are given a fresh start they cannot hope to be forgiven and they cannot expect that what they did to Ninoy be forgotten.