Law enforcers need legal safety net

It is unfortunate that some observers have seen the benefit concert of three Cabinet members as nothing more than a desperate publicity attempt. I don’t know about Angie Reyes, but I am sure Joey Lina and Bayani Fernando agreed to risk looking like fools because they believed it was for a good cause.

The cause was simple and urgent enough. The concert was designed to raise funds to help cover the legal costs of defending law enforcers who end up facing harassment suits in the course of performing their duties. Mandaluyong Mayor Ben Hur Abalos once told me that this is a serious problem that has undermined the effectiveness of our peace and order officers.

The young Abalos recalled that he once wondered why the drive against drug pushers in his city seem to have hit a brick wall after a rousing launch. It turns out that the pushers fought back through the legal system. The pushers and drug lords can afford the best lawyers, Abalos explained, while the policemen couldn’t even afford time off from work just to appear in court.

Of course the lowly police officers can’t afford the kind of legal defense that would sustain their anti-drug arrests. They don’t even have access to the legal defense that would prevent their suspension or worse, removal from the service for doing the dangerous work they were hired and have sworn to do. Disillusioned, most policemen quickly learn their lesson and stay clear of trouble. In the process, law and order breaks down and with it, our peace of mind.

Policemen however, aren’t the only ones with this dilemma. Regulators in other government agencies face the same risks for doing their jobs. Take the Bangko Sentral, for instance. After that Banco Filipino decision that attached even the inheritance of Jobo Fernandez’s heirs, Bangko Sentral regulators are now afraid to do their work as they should.

To be fair, they still try to do their job and they get burned every time. Tio Paeng himself, had to face charges against him before the Ombudsman in connection with the Urban Bank case. Another official is facing charges for closing down a rural bank in Bulacan. I am sure there are many other cases that could have been pursued more vigorously if the regulators didn’t feel so insecure.

This miserable situation came to mind after I read the apparently horrible things happening at Banco Filipino today published in some newspapers and news magazines. The charges are serious and should have elicited a BSP inquiry even ahead of media investigative reports. Now the bank’s minority shareholders are crying out for help and aren’t getting any.

I normally get a quick response from the BSP but when I forwarded a copy of one of the articles, all I got was a cryptic message. I read between the lines. They are being extra cautious, not wishing to suffer the fate of Jobo Fernandez who is being hounded even into his grave.

Jobo may have erred and deserves to suffer some penalty, mostly for heeding the call of public service when his country needed him. But his heirs who had nothing to do with the decisions he made, deserve better.

I don’t blame the regulators for hesitating to implement the law. Even a top BSP bureaucrat couldn’t afford the legal defense costs specially if the case drags on. Upon retirement, a former BSP regulator is on his own. He pays for his own lawyer for a case that was filed because he fulfilled his duty as a public officer. It is not fair but it’s reality.

This is a problem that should have attracted the attention of our legislators. While we have focused on abusive civil servants, we have failed to realize the problem faced by dedicated civil servants who only want to do their duty, no matter who gets hurt. Any civil servant who is serious with his sworn duty is bound to step on some powerful toes. There must be a way government can protect them, even by way of covering their legal defense costs.

The three officials who exposed themselves to ridicule by pretending to be tenors have their hearts in the right place. But their initial effort is hardly enough. We need a law that provides a legal insurance of sorts for public officials being sued for actions done in the line of duty. We have sent them to battle. The least we can do is give them a bulletproof vest, even belatedly.

American lackey

There was this press release from Sen. Manny Villar that bemoaned the fact that the Philippines was in his words, becoming an American lackey. Good Grief, Manny! Where have you been all these years? I can’t believe Manny and I were at the State University during the years just before the First Quarter Storm and he never found out that this country had always been an American lackey!

I guess Manny should be forgiven for his ignorance. He failed to attend the teach-ins and the demonstrations of his college years. He was busy earning a living at a public market somewhere. Now that he is rich and famous and has made it to the Senate and is in fact the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it is certainly about time that he found this thing out.

But Manny must learn another fact of life. There is nothing we can do about it. We can scream and holler until we lose our voice but the reality won’t change. We can even elect Tito Guingona to the presidency in 2004 and believe me, he would be outdoing Ate Glo in no time.

Ate Glo can be put to task for a lot of things but being pragmatic isn’t a criticism that will stick. She is doing what she must as the nation’s leader. She has accepted the fact that we need help and the world’s only superpower is the logical target for any supplications for help. With our Treasury in tatters and a serious security situation in the South threatening to drag the country down, she had to do what she did in getting into the good graces of the White House.

Hopefully, her reward would go beyond this ego-boosting state visit. The numbers being thrown around for proposed American assistance to our armed forces sound grossly inadequate, specially now that we have been tagged as another front in the global war against terrorism. We need trade concessions and the long awaited consideration for our aging veterans of World War 2.

If Manny is belatedly trying to look good by being fashionably "anti-American", my friendly advice to him is to forget it. He should forget the usual Yankee Go Home rhetoric because it is too late for that. The Yankees will never go home. The world is their home. Manny should just be totally reasonable. Negotiate tough on things we deserve and need as in the area of trade concessions and security assistance but be a total diplomat on the rest.

Manny should take his cue from Ka Blas. The former labor chief was an anti American firebrand years ago. That was how he became Ka Blas. Now that he is foreign secretary, he knows what exactly he must do for his country. One only wished Ka Blas isn’t so openly mercenary when he opens his mouth. There is such a thing as keeping the fiction of self respect. Even the Yanks would understand that.

Fundamentalists

Here’s a good one from Jay Leno via Billy Esposo.

"President Bush said that he is worried that Iraq could be overrun by religious fundamentalists. Hey, if it’s good enough for the Republican Party, it’s good enough for Iraq."

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]