Thursday, September 11, 2008 Wenceslao: Apologies to Marimons By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
FLORENCIO Marimon, captain of the ill-fated mv Princess of the Stars, did not jump ship to save his life but actually perished with the hundreds of other passengers. DNA samples submitted by family members matched that of one of the bodies recovered after the June 21 sea mishap, officials said. Rumors are lies when these contradict DNA tests.
I therefore hope conspiracy theorists would stop maligning Marimon’s memory and allow his relatives to grieve for the loss. Contradicting a scientific finding or questioning the integrity of the agencies who conducted the DNA tests won’t work. Those local and foreign forensic experts should instead be thanked for a job well done.
In the days after the mishap, I received text messages that said Marimon and some crew members escaped ahead of the other passengers, were rescued and were promptly shipped by Sulpicio Lines to an unknown place (Hong Kong, others said). Vice President Noli de Castro picked up that rumor and it spun into criticisms unfair to Marimon’s kin.
I hope those who had been too harsh in their reaction to the Marimon rumor (that includes some of us media people) would pause for a moment, pray for the eternal repose of his soul and offer their apologies. That goes, too, for those who spread the rumor and made the people believe in the lie. Marimon’s relatives deserve the apologies, and more.
Marimon was as much a victim as the others who died in the tragedy. While he can be faulted for the lapses he committed and which led to the ship’s sinking, he surely did not intend to commit mass murder. Lapse in judgment can’t be equated with criminal intent. Besides, many of us really didn’t know Marimon as a person when he was alive.
I therefore pity his family who were forced to hold a wake in a local funeral parlor and bury him at the Pardo cemetery yesterday while fending off media intrusion. Their worry that the ritual would be disturbed by those who are angry at the ship skipper was real. That they refused to accept media interviews should not also be taken against them.
With Marimon buried, that aspect of the Princess of the Stars sinking, and the nasty rumors brought in its wake, should be closed. The main focus should now be on the identification of the other bodies, the retrieval of the ship and the filing of cases against Sulpicio Lines. The victims’ quest for justice is not yet over and much is still to be done.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
