EDITORIAL - Playing deaf and blind

What is happening to this country? First, it appears that no one massacred the Vizconde family. With no one held accountable for the murders, we might just as well say that the victims killed themselves.

 Now this latest development — no one abducted and killed publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito. The suspect foremost in most people’s minds has just been cleared. Are we then to just as well say that Dacer and Corbito killed themselves?

 Of course this is not the first time that those involved in heinous and high-profile crimes have managed to wriggle themselves away from accountability and trouble. This is not the first time that no one has been made to answer for their crimes.

 Perhaps it might help ordinary people to understand that there is a common thread that sews up all the suspects into one tidy and neat bunch, and it is that all of them are prominent and powerful.

 And, in addition to prominence and power, they also happen to know the game and play it well. It helps to understand these things to know that the dynamics of friendships and enmities also play crucial roles in obtaining reprieves.

 Paybacks and tradeoffs happen all the time, but they become more brutal and obnoxious when applied to high crimes, especially those that ultimately involve the sacrifice of human lives.

 This government loves to take the high road by proclaiming honesty and incorruptibility. Well, what honesty and incorruptibility are there when, to borrow its own favorite phrase, this very same government is “nagbulag-bulagan at nagbingi-bingian lang.”

Has it never occurred to President Aquino that to do simply nothing about the fact that the Vizconde and Dacer/Corbito killers are going scot-free, he himself may just as well be “nagbulag-bulagan at nagbingi-bingian lang?”