Dispatches from the Enchanted Kingdom
Business Mirror
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
The tabloid’s headline said, “Arroyo orders raps vs DOJ, PDEA personnel. Also criminal charges vs ‘Alabang Boys’.” I read the story and I don’t know what to make of it.
Did Arroyo believe the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors were bribed?
Did she think the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) agents carried out a buy-bust without an operations manual, used excessive force, maltreated unarmed suspects, failed to follow proper procedure in the handling of evidence, and freed the driver of the car where the alleged drug transaction took place?
Did she find probable cause to charge the Alabang Boys?
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s spokesman claimed she “took into very serious consideration the input” of the fact-finding body she formed after a PDEA agent alleged that DOJ prosecutors were paid to throw the case. Unfortunately, the commission’s report was kept confidential.
Neither a copy of the panel’s report nor of Arroyo’s subsequent order was made available to the suspected drug pushers, the DOJ or the PDEA.
The suspects wanted to know the basis for Arroyo’s reversal of the DOJ resolution to dismiss their case. They wanted due process, the right to reply, but they didn’t get it. They’re not happy.
The DOJ is not happy, either. Justice chief Raul Gonzalez always believed he had the last word on the resolution of the case.
“Under the law, actually, it should be my resolution. That is what is provided by law,” said Gonzalez a week before the panel submitted its report to the Palace.
Two weeks later, Arroyo issued her directive and Gonzalez could only say, “That is the order of the President. You have to obey that. She is the boss.” The hurt feelings are palpable.
Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño, charged with negligence for the “cursory conduct of review” of the resolution on the case against the Alabang Boys, said, “My only reaction is that the resolution we approved was also approved and adopted by Secretary Gonzalez. That’s all.”
Gonzalez confirmed Zuño’s statement. He said, “In my review of the resolution, I did not just uphold the findings. I modified it and concentrated on bribery. There was no bribery.”
Indeed there was no bribery. When panel members Justice Raoul Victorino and Dean Fr. Ranhilio Aquino asked PDEA chief Dionisio Santiago if he had any direct evidence of bribery, Santiago had to admit, “There’s none. We have no evidence, no information to confirm that they received the bribe. We don’t have direct knowledge.”
He added, “We were told before that the case would be filed, then so suddenly it was dismissed, we wondered why?”
Why? Because the case will not stand up in court, that’s why.
Santiago’s agents didn’t have an operations manual to guide them. Their affidavits and after-operations reports were a mess. The arrest was illegal. The evidence was mishandled. Excessive force was used against unarmed suspects, who were not even properly informed of their rights. One of the agents, asked by Justice Victorino to recite the Miranda rights, could not even do it in either English or Pilipino.
That’s why only the PDEA is happy about the nondisclosure of the panel’s report. It was able to claim partial “vindication” based solely on Arroyo’s directive.
Without the panel’s report, the PDEA’s psy-war tactics turned vigilantes into heroes, DOJ prosecutors into heels, and suspected drug pushers into poster boys for Arroyo’s war on drugs.
The Alabang Boys will be charged with a nonbailable offense. Their case will be dismissed, eventually, but they will have to wait in a cell for a long time. Their only consolation will be that they are still alive, unlike those suspected car thieves on Ortigas Avenue and Edsa who were murdered, gangland style, by thugs who fancied themselves judge-executioners.
Moral certainty and righteous indignation are no substitutes for due process and the rule of law. Vigilante justice has no place in civilized societies.
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not so fast, mbuencamino. you can’t have “vigilante justice” and court indictment at the same time. correct me if i’m wrong but thought
What if we have vigilante justice, who’d be left in the Philippines alive?
cont’d.
but i thought the president created the commission in order to have a neutral body to investigate the allegations given that some staff members of the doj itself are alleged to be involved. i believe that the president has the inherent power, and duty, to constitute such a body under proper circumstances. sec gonzales is right, she’s the “boss”.
why don’t we just refrain from this undesirable propensity to speculate on matters we have no complete knowledge of? until a case is tried, we have no business making conclusions as to the existence, sufficiency, reliability and admissibility of the evidence that will be offered at trial.
in “ordering” the filing of charges, the president is apparently following the recommendation of the special investigating committee, whose report must be treated confidential in order not to compromise the case for the prosecution. what’s wrong with that?
all the respondents will have their day in court. just because they are charged doesn’t mean that they are condemned. if the prosecution’s case proves to be weak, they will go scot-free. that’s how the system goes. let’s all help to make it work.
We want to follow the due process of law, as
we citizens always want. However, the War on
Drugs is a special kind of War. These Drug Lords
are International Syndicates. They dont care
anything about Human Rights. They will bribe and
kill people to extend their markets.And control a
country.
The World of Drug Dealer is a Real World. It is
a Trillion Dollars Business. It is a faceless
highly sophisticated syndicate, bent on controlling everything. Look at what is happening to Mexico now !
Good take, Procopio.
But reality is, PDEA has been weak in destroying the drug manufacturers. The authorities raid the shabu factories but not apprehend the producers. Or if they do, the Chinese drug lords either eventually post bail, ges acquitted, or simply escape.
I’m not sure where the weaknesses are, but this Alabang Boys is about big time users but small pushers. If we have vigilante justice, let’s get the big fishes and do some Lim Seng executions ala Marcos days.
Continuing from my comment above, I deeply advocate that the death penalty be restored for big-time drug producers.
The Chinese triads have the gall to manufacture shabu in the Philippines because we don’t have capital punishment, unlike in China where these banes of society and bringers of suffering and misery will be executed immediately.
Indeed, our compassionate attitude in crime and punishment does us naught.
The invoked confidentiality of the report of that Fact-Finding Body is, to my mind, another legal smokescreen.
What law or legal principle can in fact and in effect doze off legal smokescreens in general, if any?
The question now is this, will the Supreme Court uphold the opaque ruling by GMA? She has to put forth the basis for her ordering the refiling of charges versus the Alabang boys and filing of charges versus the prosecutors.
She cannot order it simply by proclamation.
Phil, the delapidated inhuman condition in Muntinlupa gives them second thought. They’d rather die than spend part of their life in Philippine prison.
Philippines would never kill a Chinese citizen because we are powerless. We are even powerless to poacheers in terretorial waters how much more when Chinese rattle their sabers.
Tell this also to your Lynch Mobs!
J_AG, no one respects our Supreme Court. You are right, GMA has overstepped her powers in ordering the “refiling of charges”.
If Supreme Court catipulate to GMA I would not be surprised. SC even made rulings in absolute scientific nature to over-rule the findings of CIA, NBI, FBI, Mossad, Chinese & Australian intellgence in Glorieta Bombing just because Ayala insisted it was a terrorist bombing not spontaneous combustion.
I don’t trust SC. There’s is law in the Philippines but it’s only for decoration and the powerless and the helpless.
We’re doooomed!!!!
This fit of ‘micro-management syndrome’ attack permits GMA to stand as the legal czarina – and no one should question that, period.
Its her band aid solution to a festering wound what did you expect. Pfff..