Abadilla 5, waiting for PNoy, waiting for hope
by Fr. Roberto P. Reyes, www.thepoc.net
January 5, 2013

In a few months, the Abadilla 5 will be celebrating or is it more appropriate to saymourning seenteen long years of imprisonment for a crime that they did not commit. My feelings of frustration and indignation do not compare with the anguish of five innocent men hoping against hope behind bars. Joel de Jesus; Rameses de Jesus; Cesar Fortuna; Len Lumanog ang Augusto Santos have been riding the boat called hope through stormy and treacherous seas of legal and political power play. I have shared the same boat with these five men and their families in the last fourteen years since a dead man’s watch (Col. Rolando Abadilla’s Omega watch) brought our lives together.

Even while I undergo the rigors of religious formation in a Franciscan Novitiate, I continue to think of and pray for these five men and their families. I have personally witnessed their struggle for truth, justice and freedom and most of all seen how in spite of the bizarre behavior of the courts and the other branches of government, they continue to keep the faith in the God of hope.

Last December 31, 2012, I received the following text message from Len Lumanog, who is being carefully monitored for kidney rejection at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute:

“Father, pls tell us if we are hopeless with this government, para ho di na kami umasa. Napakahirap ho sa may karamdaman, katulad ko. Do u think we have to wake up and stop dreaming? Happy New year po.”

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