Miracle or prolonged agony

FILIPINOS gave a collective sigh of relief upon hearing news that Mary Jane Veloso’s execution was postponed, even as eight others were carried through despite appeals from world leaders. But celebrations are on hold as we determine whether what happened was a miracle or something else that only prolongs the agony. What we have as of this writing is a Jakarta Post report saying that the reprieve was granted after the woman who recruited Veloso as a drug courier had surrendered to Philippine authorities. Clearly, Veloso is, as they say, not yet out of the woods.

It is also becoming evident that President Aquino deserves credit for the reprieve. Before this development, the Aquino government was lambasted for supposedly acting too late and not doing enough to provide assistance to Veloso. It turns out that President Aquino had written letters and made personal appeals as early as when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was Indonesia’s president, way before the present-day media fanfare. In fact, Migrante and its allies have been exploiting the looming execution to lob political attacks at the administration, conveniently forgetting that a crime was committed albeit unwittingly.