POSTSCRIPT By Federico D. Pascual Jr. (The Philippine Star) Updated December 19, 2010
The release by the Sandiganbayan of former military comptroller Carlos Garcia for the price of P60,000 ($1,500) despite very strong evidence of plunder, a non-bailable crime, means to many shocked onlookers that justice in the Philippines is for sale.
The judges and the lawyers aptly called the legal sleight-of-hands “plea bargain.” This sales gambit is a grander-scale version of the same haggling (“tawaran”) ongoing on the sidewalks of Divisoria.
With that scandalously lopsided bargain, the Sandiganbayan and the prosecution service have institutionalized “TRANSANCTIONAL JUSTICE,” an oxymoron but a long-recognized reality in our courts.
But I would hesitate to go along with a proposal to rename the Sandiganbayan to “Sandiganbayad” despite claims that we have the best judges that money can buy.
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UNMASK CONSPIRATORS: Will Garcia now fly to the US, a refuge of thieves and scoundrels, to enjoy with his Stateside family the wealth he had amassed as armed forces comptroller through whose hands passed billions in military transactions?
It is impossible for a solitary general to commit plunder running into hundreds of millions, possibly even billions, without the connivance of superiors and associates.
With the dropping of the plunder charges, who will unmask these co-conspirators who must have pulled strings and paid good money to spring the point man before he squeals on the whole caboodle?
With the utter failure of the justice system, do we now call in the NPA (Nice People Around) to carry out swift alternative justice?
Where I come from, when a farmer’s carabao is stolen, he runs to the NPA. The carabao is recovered and the cattle rustler processed into carabeef. No more plea bargaining, no such thing as a P60,000 bail and all that bull dung.
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LAWFUL BUT AWFUL: Government prosecutors and the justices (a misnomer?) of the Sandiganbayad, I mean Sandiganbayan, will go into that escapist routine of pointing to one another and citing the law (the law of supply and demand?).
But, my gad, what is lawful is not always right. It is sometimes awful. And what the courts dispense is not always justice but only a poor facsimile thereof.
As for the Supreme Court, whatever it does may just be dismissed for being the action of lapdogs appointed by the immediate past president. Alas, that is how deep the incumbent president has ruined respect and fomented contempt for the High Court.
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OPEN-JAIL POLICY: Asked by concerned citizens to do something, President Aquino – who seems to have an OPEN-JAIL policy – could wash his hands and say that Garcia’s state-sponsored escape is for the judiciary, a co-equal branch, to explain.
He could issue a token order to Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to study what could be done. Safe action. But useless. Then, how sure are we that he would uphold what the lady recommends after an in-depth review?
Malacañang’s strategic miscommunication experts could announce that with the season of goodwill upon us, the President -–in pursuit of his open-jail policy – may just abolish prisons and in their place put flower gardens, spas, gaming arcades... etc.
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NOBEL BOYCOTT: It seems that President Aquino, who is after all a child of Philippine politics, is not without a transactional streak.
His eye for the quid-pro-quo was exposed, it seems inadvertently, when he explained that we did not attend the Nobel awards ceremony in Oslo with the expectation of securing the release of Filipinos jailed in China on drugs charges.
The presidential slip of the tongue was unfortunate, because it exposed a transactional motive. Our absence was seen in light of the Chinese campaign for a boycott, because the peace award went to a human rights advocate it had imprisoned.
Malacañang should have simply stood on the premise that there was no need to explain our absence. We just skipped the ceremony, period.
After all, a country’s respect for or adherence to human rights is not measured by its attendance in the Nobel ritual which, like similar awards-and-rewards programs, is being used by the West as a mechanism for political pressure.
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IT’S GEOGRAPHY: We may occasionally shift our ideological orientation as dictated by changing national interest, but we can never alter GEOGRAPHY.
For better or for worse, we are stuck on this planet with our immediate neighbors. The earlier we mend our fences and build bridges to them, especially those just next door, the better for our national interest.
It is refreshing that under President Aquino, the Philippines is showing signs of maturing in its diplomatic outlook, that it is reaching out to the people next door.
Discarding our Washington-designed blinders, we are now discovering that there is a real world historically and racially closer to us right here in Asia.
The future is right here. Let no one distract us from this reality predetermined by ethnicity and geography.
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OLDER ASIAN TIES: Long before Americans set foot here and discovered a lovely people in thriving communities on these balmy islands, we were already trading heavily with the Chinese, fellow Malays and other Southeast Asian neighbors.
Without losing our global outlook, without casting aside old friends and trading partners, we have been opening windows to immediate neighbors just outside the fence, across the sea.
This reaching out to our fellow Asians and improving relations with them is not a rejection of our historical ties with the West, including the United States.
This apparent shift in emphasis is not (or should not be) out of a desire to gain the release of the Filipinos in Chinese jails. We are just acting the way we are, as Asians, as good neighbors.
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