Florence

By Rolo B. Cena
The Gulf Files
Dumaguete Star Informer
17 October 2010

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – Incidentally, this is not all about nurses and nursing profession; this is about women of the society, young or old, and their search for justice.

To date, three young and jovial Florence of the society are dreadfully derailed by irresponsibly-imposed human cruelties that would undoubtedly alter their respective life.

Symbolically, Florence comes from the name Florence Nightingale, the mother and founder of Nursing Profession. Briefly, Florence founded the Nursing profession by volunteering to attend to the wounded victims and soldiers during the Crimean War. Since then, Nursing has evolved into a very lucrative and attractive profession for women and later for men as well, a profession that cares for the world.

Florence, Charice, and Raissa: Highly spirited young women whose convictions apparently would have reached heights had they not encountered this grotesque form of inhumane and selfish disposition of freedom to live and the power to serve.

Florence, not her real name, a volunteer Nurse in Maguindanao was gang raped. Charice, a twelve-year old girl from Olongapo was raped. Raissa, a Law student became the victim of bomb explosion.

In support to their plight, members of the Nursing Community and the constituents of the City staged protest rallies and demonstrations to call the attention of the Administration for the speedy disposition of their cases. In consolation to Raissa, a Committee mandated to investigate the matter was formed comprising the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court.

The atrocious and cannibalistic attackers of Florence are believed to belong to rich and influential families. As per the newscast in one of the top rated terrestrial giants, an aggregate number of men from the son of the school principal, to a drunkard, and to a certain vice mayor of the locality, etc. are allegedly involved.

The attacker of Charice is the wisdom-dehydrated city executive whose mandate to run his public office comes from its constituents including her. It was such a boorish display of good governance and a cruel assassination of gentlemanliness and fatherhood.

It was an unintelligible move from equally incomprehensible minds of raising an issue of social or ideological conflict through a piece of grenade or improvised domestic bombs unleashed in the last day of the Bar Exams. Such a conflict between and among ideologies and academic points of view over something unresolved to date by intellectually blessed group of men brought to the streets these irresponsible members and started barking at a wrong tree. And sadly, Raissa, a member of the peer-pressured group was herself a startling victim.

Florence and Charice were victims of flesh hungry monsters that thrive in the urban areas disguised as political figures who claimed to be pro-life advocates supporting the government that defines its governance as “off the people, poor the people, and buy the people” while Raissa was a victim of an uncalled-for explosion of ideological conflicts and idiosyncrasies of young minds enslaved by a medium called brotherhood.

Of the three cases, my fearless forecast of the perceptible application of whitewash is on Florence and Charice. It is a known fact in this country that whenever influential families are involved, money talks louder than justice and power controls the process all through the promulgation of the verdict. In the case of Raissa, hopefully the committee will come up with an unbiased findings and sound recommendations to sanction the culprits. In case big fishes are behind this bombing, which hopefully will not be the case, whitewashing would just be as flawless as expected.

And what will happen to the victims in case of whitewash?

Except for Raissa, Florence and Charice will be living in humiliation for the rest of their lives; and their perspective will change from good to bad, withdrawal may ensue. The worst of it all, these monsters will continue to deface the earth and attack all human life forms and mercilessly subdue them to their powers in the most hostile vehicle: lust! These monsters will continue to breed like the reincarnated aliens from the dark ages that only the magical powers of the Olympian gods can cause them to perish forever from the face of the greed-controlled Philippines.

Raissa can still continue with her studies and become a lawyer in the future sans the beauty of strolling the countryside, courtrooms and justice corridors in a naturally-created pair of foot. Though life would continue, one that is at her disposal will be constricted and delimited.

The bad thing about obnoxious discharge of power, great or small, is that the owner can hardly be pressed to submit to authorities or be annihilated from earthly existence all at once.

Selfishness consumes the minds of these predators that even death by gas chamber would not suffice; insecurities rule the psyche of these marauders that a temporary accommodation at the purgatory does not justify. May the gods of the River of Death consume their impassionate souls and insatiable lusts or be encrypted by the hypnotic-eyed Medusa to be caused completely immobile for the rest of their lives.

Even if we bury these tormentors in the chamber of Judas the Iscariot, the near-end repentant Judas will certainly despise them.