The World has Always Been Crazy, We Just Don’t Notice It: Mayor Beats Up 56 Year Old Man and 14 Year Old Boy

I interrupt the retardery to bring you guys something really appaling. This is certainly something not everybody should go through, especially not during the Christmas season.

18 year-old Bambee dela Paz, student athlete, had gone through a horrible experience involving her family and some men in power.

I’ll let these snippets from her blog entry speak for itself.

So, I just had the worst day of my life.
At around 1:30 PM today, at Valley Golf and Country Club, Antipolo City, Mayor Nasser Pangandaman, Jr., Mayor of Masiu City, Lanao del Sur, his father, Secretary Nasser Pangandaman of the Department of Agrarian Reform, and company, beat my defenseless 56-year-old dad and my 14-year-old brother to a pulp because of some stupid misunderstanding on the golf course.

Things get heated up. Voices were raised. But never, in my wildest dreams, did I ever imagine that someone would pull out a punch. Apparently not. He attacks my father. His flightmates, maybe 2 or 3 of them, rush to his aid and beat up my father.
My 56-year-old father. My younger brother and I could not just watch. We rushed to break the fight. My younger brother pleads to the mayor to please stop it. To not hurt my dad. To just stop. His words still ring through my head…”Sorry na po, sorry na po…tama na…tama na po…” With his hands in front of his chest in a praying position. PLEADING. The mayor socks him in the face.
My brother defended himself. My dad is still on the ground getting clobbered. My brother is the same way. I try to stop the fight, but all I can do is stop one person. There were 4 or 5 of them attacking now.

After the mauling incident, the dela Paz family leave to avoid more trouble, file a report, and seek medical help. But they encounter Pangandaman’s group yet again.

Their group comes to the clubhouse, sees my brother. Once again my brother pleads, says sorry, and is crying. He was CRYING, for crissakes. But no. The relentless mayor still punches him in the face, and then sees my dad and goes after my dad again. Him and his friend pull my dad to the ground, pulls at his feet, and steps on him like he’s dirt.

And to make things worse, guns were pulled on them:

When I finally got my mom under control, my older brother gets away and I hold him off. Two of the mayor’s bodyguards pull out guns. I embraced my brother from the back, just holding him back, crying. The receptionists came to us, crying, hugging me, my dad, and my mom, whispering to us to just leave. “Maam, umalis na po kayo, may mga baril sila…Maam…umalis na po kayo please…”

Believe me, I was shaking in anger as I read that entry. If every bit of that article was true (and trust me, I have no reason to believe otherwise), then these politicians have done us a great disservice.

This is one of those things that you cannot justify. You are an elected official, a member of the cabinet, armed bodyguards in tow, then you maul a helpless man and his teenage son in public because of some petty golf spat? And you have the audacity to file counter-charges on the 14-year old boy? Shame on you!

Ia says it best: “you are not gods among humans. You and I are mere specks in the universe.”

Don’t even try to say “Welcome to the Philippines, you ignorant middle-class people who have no sense of what it is to live in here!” because apathy will only condone actions of these sort.

I disagree with Bambee when she says that the world is going crazy. It has always been crazy. Worse things have and will be done to other people, and unlike her, they won’t have a voice to bring such injustices to light. But it doesn’t mean that we should let the world stay that way.

I shall end this with Bambee’s closing words on her blog: