For whom the bell tolls

Bencyrus Ellorin

AUGUST 29 was nothing out of the ordinary at the City Hall.

There were no gathering of political leaders and supporters. Mayor Oscar S. Moreno was busy attending to his usual daily duties.

Save for some noise in the news about the expiring 60-day reprieve of his dismissal order from the Ombudsman for a case that stemmed from road projects when he was still governor of Misamis Oriental, it was business-as-usual a day after the city rejoiced over the Feast of St. Agustine.

The Court of Appeals issued a Writ of Preliminary Injunction on Moreno’s dismissal orders on Aug. 29. The mayor’s copy was received by his office at 3:17 in the afternoon.

The 11-page resolution penned by Associate Justice Louis P. Acosta and concurred by Associate justice Edgardo A. Camello (Associate Justice Oscar V. Badelles is on leave) reiterated among others that the decisions of the Ombudsman to dismiss Moreno cannot yet be executed as the Ombudsman still has to rule on the mayor’s motion for reconsideration. And even if the mayor loses in his motion for reconsideration, he still has the remedy of appeal.

According to resolution, the Ombudsman’s stand that its order is immediately executory “merits scant consideration.”

The CA rued that the Ombudsman has yet to resolve Moreno’s motion for reconsideration “despite having been enjoined by the Court to resolve the same with utmost dispatch.”

Mayor Moreno may not be downplaying his political problems, but his message for the local political opposition that has demonstrated the incapacity to move on, and the local bureaucracy is to side step politics and focus on building Cagayan de Oro City, the emerging 4th metropolitan city of the country.

The mayor has been bull-headed in his stand that the cases filed against him are his own calvary and that he does not want to inconvenience the people of the city. In fact, when supporters mobilized two months ago to express support to the mayor, he was said to have asked his political lieutenants who instigated the mobilization cum prayer rally and mass. It can be recalled that when the Court of Appeals issued the 60-day TRO, after thanking his lawyers and telling the media “justice is alive in Cagayan de Oro City,” he immediately told people at the City Hall to get back to work.

There should no longer be disruptions. The proximity of the city from Marawi City where armed conflict has been on its fourth month already adds to the complexity of governing one of the fastest growing cities in the country.

But politics cannot be totally swept under the rug. Let it be, even if the political opposition has now been reduced to a fishing expedition.

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Drawing symbolism from Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel describing the brutality of war — “For whom the bell tolls” — the Archdiocese Bishop Antonio Ledesma has called on all churches in the archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro to ring the profundis bell every 8 o’clock in the evening to remember the dead.

“I am appealing to all our churches and communities to revive the tradition of ringing the ‘De Profundis’ bells at 8:00 every evening and to say the prayers for the dead.  Let this be our sign of protest against extra-judicial killings in the ‘war on drugs.’  Let this also be our call to prayer until the end of Martial Law – in  solidarity with all the affected families in the Marawi crisis, especially those who have lost loved ones,” Ledesma wrote in a Pastoral Letter dated Aug. 28, 2017.

Other church leaders around the country had called on the tolling of the bell to protest the mounting deaths from the government’s so-called war on drugs. Calls for a stop to the bloodshed took dramatic turn when a 17-year-old Kian de los Santos, who was believed to have been summarily executed by policemen in an anti-drug shakedown in Caloocan City on Aug. 16.

According to an article in the Catholic Eye Candy, “The tradition of ringing a bell to remind the faithful to pray for the dead is a very ancient custom. Even predating the tradition of the Angelus Bell, the De Profundis Bell was rung to denote a time of the day to recite Psalm 130.”

Psalm 130, also known as “My soul waits for the Lord.”

Religious beliefs have invariably entered the political equation in the issue of extra judicial killings, with many so-called believers of the Christian faith cheering on the bloodbath. They seemed to be so sure all those who died are guilty. But such selfighteousness betrays the so-called believers.

From my basic understanding of Christian teachings, love is the highest law. Jesus Christ himself set a very high bar – that of loving his enemy. For us lesser mortals, we are enjoined to love our neighbors. Those cheering on the killings are guilty of at least two of the 10 commandments, the commandment that makes “bearing false witness” a sin, and “thou shall not kill.”

Making a “false witness” a sin is to me the Bible’s provision on due process. That one cannot condemn unless he or she is a witness to wrongdoing. “Thou shall not kill” is self-explanatory. Although, the cheerers of the extrajudicial killings may not have direct participation in the shooting, they could be guilty of inducement. And thus, they have blood of the victims on their hands.