Where is Justice?

Someone asked me that question yesterday and I told him in plain Hiligaynon, “Wala ako kabalo” (I don’t know). Shrugging him away, I began to analyze what I had said.

I really don’t know where is Justice.

Is she at the Hall named after Avaceña?

Is she at that small cubicle in our school?

Is she in a trial court right now?

Is she at church?

Is she walking past me?

Is she asleep?

I really don’t know where Justice is.

***

Today was very grueling. Much more grueling than the gruel served at me when I am sick. I had to redo Tatay’s presentation again.

02.00pm. He called me up, impatient voice mode as always, to hurry my lunch so that I could help him. I explained to him that we were both on the extremes of the city (he in Jaro and me at Valeria) and that I was already on a cab. He then makes this irritating sound via phone. A slow and painful exhale of voice. That means it’s code red.

07.00pm. finishing the job about 4pm, I head back to the office and proceeded with my daily non essential tasks. At the stroke of seven this pm, while I was feasting on yet another meal, my phone rang. Picking it up, it was Tatay again and then I hear that low slow painful exhale of voice. Code Red. Calling up, he said that something was amiss his presentation. And that he needs me asap. Like I could jump four lots of establishments and a set of stairs just to go to him. But that wheezing has got me motivated enough. This is code red, and your freaking entire life depends on this.

07.30pm. Font size not even. Color not for me. It’s too simple. Make this work. Those were repeated to me as I add another few slides of his presentation. After encoding it and making him review it all, it was found out that there were some un-encoded data. A spread of proposed activities from November to December. He asked me if I encoded it? I said no because I only received until October. He said that he gave it to me. It was on the backside of the August to October plan. How in the world would I had knew that? Imagine a crummy bond paper filled with ‘doctoral’ handwriting and crammed from every corner possible. The last thing I saw from that paper was the October schedule on the right hand side, squeezed by the title on the left and other data from the bottom. I wasn’t clearly expecting that there was more, but there was. I told him I didn’t saw it earlier but he insists. Typical, I-am-superior mode running here. And I was stuck there admitting something I did not do and I had done nothing. I could have done something but it would be tragic to say something at that moment. Remember: Code Red.

So where is Justice?

***

I remembered another scene from my family’s (excluding me) most-watched teleserye, Santino, I mean, May Bukas Pa. For those who do not watch this, including me, the teleserye revolves on the saintly virtues of a big-eyed puppy face cute kid who ‘miraculously’ transforms lives with the help and guidance of ‘Bro’.

Back to the scene. The scene is with the police CO and T. Gutierrez who plays a cop. The Co was infuriated and his ego was hit because Gutierrez did not stay at Bagong Pag-asa (his town) and went to Manila to rescue Santino from the hands of the syndicate using children as beggars (which he successfully did). The CO said Gutierrez had made an AWOL and that he disobeyed the CO. The episode ends with Gutierrez having to give up his police-hood by order of the CO.

So where is Justice?

***

After being ‘free’ for more than a hundred years, and being a ‘justifying’ country for over a decade now, I still wonder where is that big well-proclaimed ‘freedom and justice’ that our government banner waves at us. After surviving four presidents, and countless of senate meetings, and assemblies, I had yet not understood why our country is called as ‘justice giving’. If prejudicial killings, kidnapping, politically instigated happenings, murder, assaults, war and terrorism still grip the land of this big pearl, then are we giving out justice?

Justice could be given out on a plate easy if people just do their jobs properly.

So where now is Justice?

Proxima

Maybe indeed she is asleep. Maybe she is still stuck on traffic. Maybe she migrated.

Maximus Proxima

Maybe she's at Ticud. Or maybe just processing her credentials to transfer into another university.

Jat, good luck./KP