If Reynaldo Galman were like Chato Olivas, he would be writing four-page letters to editors and giving interviews to journalists of all types, raising before the general public such questions as:

"How would you feel if your father had been killed; your grandmother and half-sister, detained against their will; your mother, kidnapped and presumed by many to be dead; and your surviving family, forced to subsist on the charity of your lawyer?

"Worse, how would you fell if your father were accused before the entire world of being the communist assassin who shot Sen. Benigno S. Aquino, Jr.?"

Compared to these questioned -- implied in Reynaldo’s testimony before the Sandiganbayan (Veritas, Mar. 17), Chato’s "How do you feel if your father was indicted?" pales into a plaintive whimper.

The law is on Chato’s side when she demands that we presume her father to be innocent until the courts rule otherwise. But human psychology is on the side of those who feel that there is something terribly unfair about according a presumption of innocence to Chato’s father (who is alive, undetained, and drawing his salary) who has consistently refused to extend a similar presumption of innocence to Reynaldo’s slain father.

GEORGE LADERA