lenient tendencies

I watched Miss Hammurabi last night and I downed about 5 episodes.

One line struck me most, it says, “you can’t compare the sorrow of the victim with that of the suspect.”

This is corresponding to sexual harassment in a workplace where the boss uses his power to intimidate the intern. The company ousted the boss notwithstanding that he was a top performer. The intern was painted to be oversensitive for the boss’ green “jokes” and that everyone was treated the same, the boss likes to joke with sexual innuendos and even sends messages to interns with a picture of his hairy chest. The boss asked for leniency in court since he is the breadwinner and he has kids to send to school.

The judges convened to make a decision and they take into consideration whether the termination of his employment was too harsh as punishment and they mentioned that while the termination means a death of the family, having no means for financial support, it does not make him less liable.

The sorrow that he and his family will be experiencing is a result of his intentional actions and the sorrow that the victim experiences is not a choice made by her. She was put into a sticky situation against her will and thus, she fought for it.

While this is from a Kdrama, I think that this is something very insightful.

When we think about it, in Filipino setting, the presumption of innocence is too big that even after conviction, we still think of leniency. I think this is because we have this notion that since time cannot be turned back, there is nothing we can do but forgive. And we take forgiveness in a whole new level. That level when we forget that the person who committed the crime can do it again to another victim. And the cycle goes on.

I am leaning towards the idea that justice is not really something that can be achieved by the human hands because our power is very limited. When I was a law student few years back, the more I read about cases, the more disappointed I became. There were so many cases where money resolves everything. Or if not, there are so many instances where the verdict takes forever, the victim already died while the case was being processed and the case was then  dismissed. Justice takes time, and when you drag it, only the wealthy can survive.

We always put ourselves in the shoes of the suspects, but not the victim. It seems that we glorify their acts by tolerating them, giving them the liberty to dodge harsher punishments.

While it is true that we are “tao lang, nagkakamali din” it doesn’t exempt one from being held accountable from the damage that he have caused. What about the victim? Her life will never be the same again. She will live in fear, in self-pity, in mixed emotions perhaps, from the trauma that she had experienced.

We live in the world with so many inconsistencies. We live with so much irony that the right can be wrong and the wrong can be right. Either way, we are all responsible for even our smallest decisions. The result of a miscalculation in judgment may be severe or light.

However, what is important is we always try to correct ourselves and move on from where we fell. Punishments should be corrective rather than condemning and leniency is given to those who sincerely and honestly exemplify remorse and not those who fake it to gain sympathy.

This is the power of Kdramas to me. Who would’ve thought? :D