Truth is stranger than fiction.
Or more to it, the everyday quotidian is cinema.
"Ang buhay ay showbiz, ang showbiz ay buhay (Life is show business, show business is life itself)."
So, what else is new?
What is political is cultural and vice-versa.
Very true, indeed, if you ask many entertainment personalities, one of them, movie columnist Art Tapalla, a native of Hilabaan Island in Dolores, Eastern Samar.
"Come to think of it, even running a government is like the movies with a set of characters, their delineation, conflicts, time and place of the narrative, theme, point of view, resolution, among other elements of literature and film," quipped Art in a recent conversation about the recent apprehension of former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte by virtue of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity during his war on drugs that happened during his mayoral rule in Davao City in 2011 until his presidential reign of the whole nation in 2019 when he severed his ties with the Rome Statute.
Duterte was brought to The Hague, the Netherlands to be tried on the charges against him.
In effect, stories of all sorts have been churning out about the case commonly highlighted are about the validity of the arrest according to the Philippine government and not a few legal luminaries and intellectuals, on the one hand, and about the illegality of the nab, on the other, according to the ex-president's supporters.
Very cinematic, indeed, about the tug-of-war in the tension between two forces and the gray matters spread out around the many circumstances of the subplots and surrounding the case or the cases, based on international law, like, murder, extermination, genocide, enslavement, sexual violence, persecution etc.
Added to them are the personal and private nuances of the actors in the central and peripheral boundaries of the spectacle.
This scenario would constitute, indeed, a very colorful audio-visual project in real coverage and reel interpretation.
Sadly, according to Art—whose claim to fame was his research and expose on the Regine Velasquez "ampon" (adoption) issue in the '90s, among other controversies he made public--the media, traditional and otherwise, have been focusing mostly on the war between the Marcoses and the Dutertes relative to the arrest forgetting about the socio-political, emotional implications on the part of the victims and their families--that they, too, are major protagonists as petitioners being eclipsed by bigger names and hot copies of the news story.
"Bakit sa pamilya lang ng mga Marcos at Duterte umiikot ang malalaking balita? Bakit hina-hijack lang ng mga ito ang isyu? Nakakalimutan ang prominenteng papel ng mga biktima at ng kani-kanilang pamilya at sila rin ay malalaking balita, kung tutuusin. Bakit pang-inset lang sila (Why are the news only navigate on these families? Why are they hijacking the issue? The prominent roles of the drug war victims and their families are also big news for the benefit of the general public. Why are they only an inset story?)," Tapalla argued.
"Bakit hindi i-headline na ang ugat ng kasong ito ay ang lalo pang paghihirap ng mga kapus-palad na mga Filipino at ng buong Pilipinas na hindi ginagawan ng solusyon ng mga Marcos at Duterte (Why don't they headline that the root cause of this case is the worsening poverty of the unfortunate Filipinos which is not being solved by the Marcoses and the Dutertes?)," the movie scribe asked.
"Inililigaw lang nila ang isip ng mga tao (They only mislead the minds of the people)," quipped Art.
In consonance with the discussion which is directly connected to show business, Cathy Sanchez-Babao--daughter of actress Caridad Sanchez—who is studying cultural anthropology in her graduate school echoed the sentiments of one of her classmates who lost a close family member to an Extra Judicial Killing (EJK).
"...what he said next made all of us pause. 'I understand all sides. Both victims and supporters are on the losing end here. The war on drugs was really a war against the poor,'” wrote Cathy in her FB wall.
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #OpinYonNews #DuterteArrest