She's afraid, very afraid.

Who’s Afraid of Danilo Lim?

Theres The Rub
By Conrado de Quiros

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 00:18:00 03/08/2010
ARROYO IS.

The police would not be assiduous in preventing Danny Lim from being seen and heard without express orders from their generals. Their generals would not be assiduous in ordering them to prevent him from being seen and heard without express orders from their commander in chief. And their commander in chief would not be assiduous in expressly ordering them to not make him be seen or heard if she were not afraid.

That’s what they did to Danny Lim last Thursday. They prevented him from being seen or heard. He had already been issued a day pass by Judge Elmo Alameda the day before to allow him to attend a UP forum where he was to read a paper entitled, “The Military and Social Change.” Things seemed to be going well until Thursday morning when his jailers said they couldn’t release him without express orders from their superiors, and their superiors were nowhere to be found.

Later they would say that they could not release him because they could not provide him security in UP. A stupid excuse given that all they had to do to secure him was to vow on the graves of their mothers and children, or if those are of little value to them, on pain of losing their tong and karaoke privileges, that they would do him no harm while he was outside of jail. His only source of insecurity is them.

It’s easy to see why GMA fears Lim. Lim is one of the few people, and one of the even fewer generals, who act on principle. That is a lethal combination as far as she is concerned, having principle and acting. This country has no lack of principled people who do not act. And this country has no lack of unprincipled people who do act—many of them having gotten to the highest rungs of the civilian and military totem pole by being and doing just that.

Lim it was who led the withdrawal of support from GMA in 2006, which was thwarted because Hermogenes Esperon turned against his fellows and went to the Dark Side. Well, he had precious little choice, he was being implicated in the 2004 cheating in Mindanao too. It was what got Lim jailed the first time. He it was as well who helped mount the Peninsula mutiny in 2007, for which he faced added rebellion charges.

I’ve said it before: When—or if—a new president emerges, only Antonio Trillanes will need to be pardoned, Lim won’t. Trillanes led his mutiny, the Oakwood one, when GMA was still a legitimate president, made so by a fiat of Juan de la Cruz etched in tablet at Edsa. Lim led his withdrawal of support from and mutiny against GMA when GMA was no longer president, when she was so only by a nod of Virgilio Garcillano to her request of “winning by one million votes,” etched in their respective accents. An act to overthrow a legitimate government is called a coup. An act to overthrow an illegitimate one is called justice.

All that will become patent when GMA is haled to court once she steps out of Malacañang. Which brings us to the core of why GMA fears Lim.

Because Lim is the only non-presidential candidate who has made the very presidential pronouncement that once voted into power, he will exert himself to see that justice is done. Specifically to see that GMA is brought to court to answer for her sins. “This government must be made accountable for the transgressions it committed against the people.”

That is the heart of the matter. None of the promises of the candidates, presidential or not, senatorial or not, nuisance or not, to make this country better means anything without this. This is the sine qua non, the underlying premise, the necessary precondition for doing anything to make things better.

You do not punish someone for bribing the generals to death, or to untold wealth, and making the military exceedingly politically partisan, the practice of bribing generals and making the military partisan will continue. You do not punish someone for making warlords and private armies a feature of the landscape, the warlords and private armies will become permanent. You do not punish someone for lying barefacedly to the people about what she would do and not do, for cheating the Filipinos of their future, for stealing their wealth, their hope and even their lives, lying, cheating and stealing will riot till kingdom come.

You do not punish someone for stealing the vote, the vote will be stolen again and again.

For vowing to do this, and for having a record of doing what he says, Danny Lim was prevented by the cops, by their generals and by their commander in thief from being seen and heard last Thursday in UP and elsewhere.

What they forgot, or never learned to begin with, is that when you silence truth, truth has a way of thundering forth even more loudly like a blast of trumpets before the walls of tyranny. What they overlooked, or never saw to begin with, is that when you tape, or gag, or staple the mouth of a person telling the truth, he manages to speak even more loudly, his voice echoing in the mouths of everyone around him like the booming of television sets collectively tuned in to his oratory. What they ignore, living as they do only in the present and not realizing that their future is just their past catching up with them like an avenging angel, is that when you make a good man, a just man, an innocent man, not seen or heard, he blazes forth like tongues of fire.

Let’s make damn sure he does. I leave you to your beliefs, I leave you to your choices in these elections. But for God’s sake, know there is a candidate named Danny Lim who is running for senator. For democracy’s sake, make all your friends and all your neighbors know there is a candidate named Danny Lim running for senator. For your and your children’s sake, make sure you answer when someone asks you, “Who’s afraid of Danny Lim?”

“Not me.”