What, are they filing a petition for contempt against Zaldy Co? Very strong, very powerful words. You know what that means? They’re very angry that he ignored them. That’s it. No one goes to jail. Only a lot of frowning. “Oh, Zaldy, we’re disappointed.”

People suspect the guy in charge of the money (Zaldy was appropriations chairman) might have possibly taken some of it home. Come on, everybody, do you get surprised when the chef eats?

He’s above sea level. Probably the law. How could Zaldy possibly run from justice when it’s justice that can’t afford the ticket?

They say you can’t take it with you. Zaldy Co apparently disagrees. They were able to fly it out, three of them air assets. Out of six linked to him, CAAP said.

We love jets. But we prefer them in the sky, not hiding from the law, OK? Nobody needs that many planes unless you’re either running a country or running from one.

We don’t understand, if at all, how someone can have six aircraft. Maybe he ran out of pockets, that’s why? Probably what ambition looks like when it’s completely divorced from shame. You know you’re in trouble when your congressman has more helicopters than the army.

Who even needs one private jet? You go to the airport. You wait like the people you represent in Congress. How many jets does it take to represent a district, Zaldy? We don’t have a Gulfstream in our garage. We don’t land in Kota Kinabalu when the heart acts up. Why does every “man of the people” end up allergic to economy class? And we the people. We want to fix the representative system but keep electing people who represent our dreams (dream house, dream car, dream jet), instead of those who represent our pain.

But they’re commercial, they said. A charter company: Misibis Aviation. Imagine, you employed them. But they’re self-employed.

Zaldy, when your jets leave the Philippines, who rents them? You or your friends? Asking for the taxpayers. And when you look out the window of your jet, and you see the floods below, do you ever think, maybe, just maybe, “That one’s mine!”

What’s the view like above accountability? Peaceful? Do you even see the floods anymore, or are they too far below the clouds of your excuses?

But you didn’t even escape, that’s important; you just “departed.” A word they use for flight. So gentle, too polite. Like a part of us wants to believe that flight means freedom, not running away. Like you simply got stressed by the noise and could just afford to fly away. 

Doctor said it was the heart. Zaldy, a weak heart cannot lift P4.7 billion worth of air assets. Two helicopters and a private jet for one heart possibly. Nobody’s heart’s been transported that much.

Very rare disease. Very mysterious symptoms that include obscene wealth accumulation and potentially severe allergy to subpoenas.

Ever notice the minute they seem “caught,” suddenly they all discover the human heart? Then you start to realize it isn’t really about the urgent heart or the neck brace. It’s about one little compromise, a quiet look away, some law “bent” because “everybody does it.” 

What’s terrifying isn’t that Zaldy Co left. It’s that he could. That the airport gates open wider for suspects, that a country can name its runways after heroes who die earlier than the villains who retire rich and still let the cowards board first.

They call it politics, survival. Just the way things are. It’s really some kind of forgetting how to feel that small sting of conscience that keeps a person tethered to other human beings.

And we who stay grounded, the ones they’re supposed to uplift, keep watching the skies, waiting for the sound of an engine turning back, hoping shame still knows the way home.