What was done to Bayan Muna (People First) Rep. Satur Ocampo – roused from sleep at dawn on March 19 and dragged into a plane that would have brought him to Leyte, where spurious multiple murder charges are filed against him and others – can be taken as a measure of the depths to which the country’s political situation has descended. Ocampo is accused of having personally supervised the execution of members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) in Inopacan, Leyte in 1984 – even as he is known to have been in maximum-security detention at the time the alleged killings took place. The haphazard filing of the case and the manner by which his police custodians treated him – a duly-elected official whose alleged guilt has yet to be proven – in trying to force his transfer to Leyte graphically shows the wretchedness to which the country’s political situation has sunk.
Salungguhit literally means to underline; figuratively, to underscore or highlight.
