“There was a heavy explosion,” answered Capt. Rex Payot of Joint Task Force Sulu to media personnel. The seeming staleness in the statement somehow indicated the situation in the Sulu capital, a hotbed of armed conflicts, where violence, and thus fear is reaching a status of normality.
On the morning of August 24, Monday, an explosion was heard in downtown Jolo just along the busy Serantes Street and near the Paradise Food Plaza grocery store, killing enforcers and civilians on the spot. On the same day, roughly an hour after the incident, another blast occurred 100 meters away from the first one. The twin explosion claimed a total number of 15 lives and injured 75, mostly pedestrians and vendors.
In the context of grief to loss lives, however, there is no such thing as normalization. It is always shocking and deep-cutting. For such an atrocity to occur, let alone be conceived, in an already-exhausting health crisis is just too unthinkable a possibility. In a Facebook post, AdZU alumna Zhea Alfad, now residing in Jolo, lamented:
“PAANO? In broad daylight. At the heart of the town. On the street with the most military presence. Bombed twice. BAKIT? Nakakagalit. Nakakasuka.”
(HOW? In broad daylight. At the heart of the town. On the street with the most military presence. Bombed twice. WHY? Exasperating. Disgusting.)
On August 30, Sunday, barely a week after the incident, President Duterte flew to Jolo in a mission of showing support and solidarity both to the police and the military. Aligned with his groomed appearance of being the nation’s father figure, the President said:
“I’m going to Jolo, diretso ako ngayon sa Jolo, doon sa blast site. Mabigyan ko lang ‘yung mga sundalo natin, mga sundalo ko, mga pulis ko ng importansya sa kanilang kamatayan,”
(I’m now going directly to Jolo, to the blast site. I will give my soldiers and my policemen a sense of importance in their deaths.)
Upon arrival at the ground zero of the twin bombing, he kneeled and kissed the concrete road. The monumental gesture was received with mixed reactions. On the one hand, it drew flak as plain hypocrisy, and on the other, praised as deeply consoling and, in an imagery familiar to the chief’s diehard supporters, fatherly.
The entire unfortunate event seems to convey a message: there is no timeout for terrorism, and if we are, to be honest, other societal ills too. With all that 2020 has had to offer, the limelight, it so appears, has far moved away from the pandemic despite still being in it. Humanity is relentless.
