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Monday, October 18, 2004
Amante: Irreparable losses
By ISOLDE D. AMANTE
MOMENTS before her burial, some friends of lawyer Arbet Sta. Ana-Yongco wanted to know if they could pluck the large white roses from one sympathizer’s bouquet, and place these on her grave. “Take them all. Put all the roses in,” lawyer Alice Morada said. “Arbet deserves better than this.”
After a week of tributes from all over the globe, that statement summed up the tragedy for me. The roses added a poignant note: I had never seen Atty. Yongco without a pretty rose pinned on her lapel. And while I only knew her from a distance — television clips, rare phone calls in response to news reports, one meeting hosted by women’s groups a couple of years back — I remember being impressed by how pulled-together she was, and how serene.
Last Monday, back in Manila after a month away, I awoke to a mobile phone screaming with news of Atty. Yongco’s death. “What a waste,” my mother lamented. She remembered working with the young accounting clerk so determined to attend law school that she spent nights singing in cocktail lounges, then worked a full shift by day.
When one hears of all the good deeds that Atty. Yongco accomplished in her brief life, one cannot help but mourn the loss of the future wrenched from her.
Newspapers, steeped in skeptics, recognize few heroes. And when we do recognize them, often it is too late. Yesterday, while listening to her sister Fede sing a final hymn, I looked around and saw just how many lives Atty. Yongco had touched.
And even as I mourned her passing, I wondered how long it would take before her assailant could be made to pay, if at all, for the crime.
In characteristic understatement, government admits there is a “higher than tolerable level of criminality” in the country today. The Arroyo administration’s grand plan for 2004-2010 raises, as countless other reports have done before, the need to address the shortage of prosecutors, improve the lot of an ill-equipped and undermanned police force, keep justice from being delayed.
Unlike such reports, the real-time picture bleeds. Consider the parricide case against Ruben Ecleo Jr., one of Atty. Yongco’s unfinished burdens. To date, 28 people directly linked to the case have died since 2002.
These include at least 20 followers who tried to prevent Ecleo’s arrest in Dinagat Island, Surigao del Norte on June 18, 2002. That same night in Mandaue City, four members of the Bacolod family were gunned down. The case began with Alona Bacolod-Ecleo, who was slain at 27, before her career as a doctor could even begin. Now, add to this grim list Arbet Sta. Ana-Yongco, 38.
Such irreparable losses. And until their deaths are paid for, and the questions of the bereaved answered, these are losses that weigh heavy on us all.
(ida@sunstar.com.ph)
(October 18, 2004 issue)
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