A pool of tears after Valley

By Al S. Mendoza

THE golf brawl at Valley has not dried up the tears of an anguished nation.

The decision to expel and suspend the brawlers didn’t put an absolute end to the issue that remains boiling hot as I write this.

The verdict to expel Delfin dela Paz and suspend Nasser Pangandaman Sr. for two years was but the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

The real issue then, as now, is: Was justice served?

Dela Paz, a small fry in the nation’s fabric, gets kicked out but Pangandaman receives a virtual slap in the wrist.

Still surprised?

Not me.

How can Pangandaman, a Cabinet secretary, get hanged in public?

You tell me.

Not in this country, where the big fishes almost always get away with crime.

The Valley Golf Club board of directors did the ruling.

Flashback:

Dela Paz, a fishpond owner from Pampanga, instigated a fight with two of Pangandaman’s sons.

In a confrontation over etiquette rules, Dela Paz poked a Pangandaman son with a golf umbrella in protest over the Pangandamans’ unsportsmanlike conduct of overtaking the Dela Pazes in the golf course.

That erupted into a fight at a fairway tee house between both sides.

The brawl extended at the clubhouse when their paths crossed moments after the first melee – this time, involving Dela Paz’s son and Pangandaman’s two sons and bodyguards.

It resulted in an injured ear suffered by Bino, the 14-year-old son of Dela Paz.

The Pangandaman sons were in their 20s. Tall. Hefty. One is a city mayor of Lanao del Norte.

Father-and-son versus about five, six, adults headed by the Pangandamans.

It was the Mismatch of the Century, to say it mildly.

To his credit – if it can be called that – Sec. Pangandaman did not join his sons in mauling the Dela Pazes.

Either he was too old for such hobby or, he thought, rather correctly, that he couldn’t land a clear punch anymore considering the sheer overkill his two sons and their bodyguards did to the hapless, virtually defenseless, Dela Pazes.

So glaring was the unevenness of the fight that even Manny Pacquiao, had he become a knight in shining armor, would have been of no help to the Dela Pazes’ cause.

The Valley Board said Sec. Pangandaman only got a two-year suspension because he did not join the fray.

But his two sons were banned for life. So were Dela Paz’s two children – Bino and Bambee, 18.

“Fine with me,” said Dela Paz. “Anyway, I don’t want to play anymore at Valley.”

To be clear, both were wrong: Dela Paz for instigating the fight, and the Pangandamans for flaunting their brutal display of sheer might and power against an utterly outnumbered foe.

By why Dela Paz got expelled and the Secretary got only two years is an abomination. A legal perfidy.

“Justice for One, Justice for All” reads one sign at the Hall of Justice.

Tell that to Valentin Dakuykoy.

If only to state the obvious, the Valley verdict was nothing but another case of selective justice.

In this woeful land of ours, it’s all right to do injustice to the common tao but not to the high and mighty.

The nation weeps – endlessly.

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