THERE'S a saying a single spark can start a fire.
For this blogger, a single blog article on Duterte's tough approach on crime that was displayed on Thursday's kidnappers' slay, did start a fire, against her.
For raising questions on the pervading impunity, Davao netizens heaped all rants against her. These rants include calling her ignorant, an idiot, a girl who just wants to become popular, a girl who writes out of the comfort of a room with no sense of what's going on in Davao. Worse, she's called a whore.
She changed her blog address to keep her peace from this fire. I managed to find her blog and there she wrote she had no regrets writing her piece. But it just so happened what she wrote hit on the nerves of the people in Davao. Even as she said she has no regrets, she still finds it sad that people in Davao seem to accept things as they are.
I want to tell her not all people are accepting things as they are in Davao. That not everyone is cheering every time a criminal, a suspect or an offender gets floored on the pavement.
Not this driver of a taxi I rode on that Thursday. He told me his cousin was a victim of a stray bullet from a botched police operation. His cousin, 19 years old and was working at a gasoline station, was at the wrong place at the wrong time. "Igo lang nangayo silag dispensa ang pulis, unya unsaon man mabuhi pa akong ig-agaw (They apologized, but would that bring back my cousin alive)?" he asked. They wanted to sue the cops, but they think nothing's going to happen in court. This is sad.
So when we cheer for the accomplishments of Davao's finest, we should also air complaints if there is a remiss of duty, to keep things in check.
I try to understand why people cheer in those instances. It comes from the need for order, for safety. I understand the frustration on the system of slow police work or when bad elements corrupt justice. I share that need and that frustration, I and my family have been victimized by crime. I lost my wallet to pickpockets. Our house had been "visited" by akyat bahay boys who once took a shirt I just received as a gift that I never had a chance to wear. The worse experiences were my future wife being mugged by a gun-toting thief and my relative held also by gun-yielding thugs aboard a motorcycle.
But after surviving those experiences, I don't scream for blood. Someone says there are two ways to bring order: one is retributive, one is restorative. Crime reflects something ailing in the system, and our moral obligation is to save the patient by treating the disease and not condemn him or her.
But that is still not the norm here. As one online comment puts it: "punishment is justice". That is the way for now, as what happened in Claveria last Thursday.
That's the attitude my fellow columnist Mags Maglana pointed out and that we should correct. We take pride in our authorities and on our people for accomplishing things to make Davao livable. But too much of that pride can lead us to say stupid things, like what happened online.
It can also stop us from thinking beyond our backyard, that we share the same problems everywhere such as poverty, crime and corruption are problems that needs a solution. Rather than bragging, we should help find solutions that come not just coming from authorities but from our collective will and action, as we did when calamities struck here or the region, or in political actions to stop Cha-cha, oil price hikes or privatization of public services. I wish we can cheer for that kind of solution soon.
(tyvelez@gmail.com)
