EDITORIAL - Two types of justice

It’s good to see government workers being penalized for wrongdoing. But it would be better if the prosecution net would be cast wider and catch the big fish. The government housecleaning, however, is like the brutal crackdown on illegal drugs launched during the Duterte administration, which targeted mostly suspects engaged in penny-ante drug pushing in low-income communities.

In a ruling promulgated on Sept. 17, the Sandiganbayan upheld a decision of the Baguio City Regional Trial Court Branch 5, which found Romel Beltran guilty of four counts of malversation. The Sandiganbayan, however, modified the sentence to two to 11 years in prison, from the four to seven years imposed by the RTC. Beltran was also perpetually barred from holding public office.

Beltran’s crime? In 2011 when he was a barangay treasurer at Camp 7 in Baguio City, he encashed a check for P52,000 and pocketed the money that was intended as cash prizes for winners in a sports competition.

Don’t you wish authorities in charge of the criminal justice system would be just as stringent in their pursuit of bigger fish in government? The officials in the Duterte administration, for example, who awarded billions of pesos in questionable procurement deals to an undercapitalized startup, Pharmally Pharmaceuticals, have been charged by the Office of the Ombudsman with graft, which allows bail, rather than the non-bailable offense of plunder. The threshold amount for a plunder indictment is P50 million.

Several former and incumbent government officials have been cleared by various courts of graft and plunder indictments in connection with the pork barrel scam by invoking “inordinate delay” in their prosecution – a legal tack that could leave only businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles as the only person being punished for the crime.

Minor functionaries in government agencies are sentenced to years in prison over “ghost” procurements or “ghost” employees. On the other hand, the public is waiting for kingdom come for two former members of the Monetary Board to be held accountable over allegations that they put ghost employees and their relatives on their office payroll. Anita Linda Aquino and Bruce Tolentino resigned from their high-paying MB posts amid the scandal, but the public deserves to know if the two will be held criminally liable.

Romel Beltran is going to prison over P52,000. On the other hand, Bong Revilla rejected a Sandiganbayan order to return to the National Treasury P124.5 million, in a half-baked ruling that cleared him of plunder in connection with the misuse of his pork barrel. Revilla is now seeking reelection as senator, while his former chief of staff Richard Cambe, who was convicted in the same case, died of a stroke in prison in 2021.

It’s an injustice to have two types of justice in this country: one for the ruling class, and the other for the likes of Richard Cambe and Romel Beltran.