Forty-two
The last two weeks have been downright exhausting, but it’s not the work at all but the freakin’ heat and humidity. I feel like a donkey plodding up a steep slope while laden with small boulders packed in metal boxes with tissue and excelsior.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s mission came and went, and we’re eternally grateful to Canadian senator and incoming chair of the IPU’s committee on human rights of parliamentarians Sharon Carstairs, IPU secgen Anders Johnsson, and committee secretary Ingeborg Schwarz for speaking up for Ka Bel and pressing for his immediate release.
Sen. Carstairs in particular was very determined to push for Ka Bel’s release on humanitarian grounds. During their visit to Ka Bel last Friday, April 20, she kept expressing concern over Ka Bel’s health and how the stress of incarceration was affecting him and his wife Ka Osang.
Earlier this afternoon, Mr. Johnsson called up Ka Bel and told him that the IPU had already communicated its intent to deliver a report in the next general assembly of the IPU in Bali, Indonesia next month, and that they had told National Secretary Norberto Gonzales what the gist of it would be, namely this: nabastos ang mga opisyales ng IPU mission sa mga pakikipag-usap nila sa gobyernong Macapagal-Arroyo lalo na kay Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez na kulang na lang ay ipagtulakan sila palabas ng pinto.
Anyways, despite the rude and undiplomatic treatment they received, the Sen. Carstairs et al managed to extract some small commitment from the government that if Ka Bel’s lawyers file a motion for bail, the government will not contest it and perhaps, just perhaps, even support it.
Let’s all cross our fingers and toes.
If Gringo Honasan was able to get himself released on bail — and he was caught evading arrest and was in actual hiding for two years — why isn’t Ka Bel being allowed bail? His lawyers led by Atty. Romeo Capulong have filed for bail once before, but the court turned it down.
Now, well, let’s wait and see. Perhaps the Macapagal-Arroyo administration will try to evade more flak from the international diplomatic and human rights community and spare itself the embarrassment of explaining itself and allow bail for Ka Bel.
Sana by May 1, International Labor Day Ka Bel would be out and about, once more breathing the free (if polluted) air of Quezon City and marching in the streets of Manila in time for Anakpawis’ miting de avance on Labor Day.
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All week I’ve also felt bad about Julia Campbell and her brutal murder. It’s horrible that someone like her suffered such a terrible death. Her blog entries and the pictures she took or had had taken of her showed what a a warm, humane and giving person she was. Here’s hoping that the police don’t flub the investigations and get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding her killing and catch the real killer (and not some innocent Joe Shmoe).
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Gad, I really wish I could get a pair of Crocs, but it would be really immoral to shell out P1,700 just for a pair. They’re so comfortable, and I regret not buying a pair back when I was in HK because I couldn’t find them in chocolate brown.
Anyways, thank goodness for the local brand Planet which has come up with their version of Crocs, they’re called Gators and they cost P150 (hahahahah!) a pair and they feel just as soft and comfortable as Crocs (no kidding. It’s amazing).
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I’ve been rereading Douglas Adam’s ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ , and again I am amazed at how far-reaching and mind-bendingly fertile his imagination was. The stuff he wrote redefined fiction and science fiction, and ever so often, I would come upon a paragraph or an entire page that was so full of 
innately ridiculous but seemingly logical and sane sounding observations and ‘facts’ that I ended up in a coughing fit.
I like reading fiction that makes me forget my problems as an activist and, heck, even as a human being. It makes me so sick, sometimes, frustrated at how effed-up the world is, how people kill each other and can never get along even over the most simple things!
At heart I am a pacifist, and it goes against my deepest and most basic nature to be confrontational or combative about my beliefs. Reading Douglas Adams helps me achieve a bigger (albeit less serious, but that’s ok) perspective on life and living. Heck, maybe the answer to all of this chaos, life, the universe and everything is really just ‘forty-two.’ Ask the white mice and the dolphins while we still have time and our planet hasn’t been demolished to make way for an interstellar freeway.
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