Color blind. Or the appointed son’s magic

By The Sunriser

SENATOR Robin Padilla has this to say about the man claiming to be the appointed son of God: “In my eyes, he is a hero who fought the communists, and he doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this kind of scandal. Where is our sense of gratitude to someone who fought the communists?”

Another senator, Cynthia Villar, claims she and pastor Apollo Quiboloy had been friends for years. “Pastor Quiboloy is my friend. He is very kind to my family. I have known him for a long time. It would be a shame if I support his arrest. You don’t do that to a friend… And I think he cannot commit those allegations that were raised against him.”

Both issued the above statements in the wake of Senator Risa Hontiveros’ move to cite Quiboloy in contempt and subsequently arrest him for refusing to honor the Senate’s summons.

Quiboloy is hogging the limelight what with several witnesses-cum-complainants accusing him of sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Assuming Padilla is correct in his hero worship of Quiboloy, the senator’s reasoning offers no proof as regards the pastor’s innocence. If we abide by Padilla’s logic, anybody who is anti-communist must be immune to Senate investigations.

Meanwhile, Senator Villar uses the virtues of friendship and the all-too-familiar sense of gratitude as basis of her objection to the contempt and arrest order being sought by Hontiveros against Quiboloy. In short, if she is no friend to Quiboloy, she would side with Hontiveros. And, if she has no debt of gratitude to Quiboloy, she would side with Hontiveros who is chair of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender. What is good for Cynthia Villar is certainly anathema to the Senate’s quest for truth and justice.

Padilla and Villar are looking at the Quiboloy case in technicolor or various shades of gray, rather than in black and white. The objective of the Senate investigation into Quiboloy, a powerful man of a religious cult, is truth, and probably justice to his alleged victims. But the two senators obviously do not want the Senate to arrive at the bottom of the allegations and the digging of the facts because they have debts of gratitude to Quiboloy who has no qualms about displaying his political influence like the dreaded Iglesia Ni Kristo.

There are common criminals who roam the neighborhood with guns on the sides of their bodies and there are criminals who garb themselves in white robes and walk the land with holy books in their hands. But on countless occasions, they escape notice, much less get apprehended because the authorities refuse to frisk them or open their books for one reason or another, however flimsy.

Whatever happened to the Senate where intellectual giants used to abound? Whatever happened to the immutability of truth as an indispensable component of justice?