Restoring order starts at the top

Behaviorists call it synchronicity – events happening separately yet leading to one result. As Lakas president and secretary general, Teofisto Guingona and Heherson Alvarez had helped steer the recent All-Parties Summit. The ruling party held a big stake in the issues at hand, such as growing distrust in the justice system due to rising heinous and petty crimes. The Summit agreed to revive people’s faith through stricter law enforcement starting at the top.

Four days later news broke to test the two leaders’ resolve. Guingona, a Vice President and foreign secretary, supposedly had written President Gloria Arroyo to have Alvarez sacked as natural resources chief. The story had it that Guingona even recommended a replacement, an undersecretary of Joseph Estrada.

Alvarez reacted with disbelief. The two had worked closely to unseat Estrada in October 2000. Guingona had delivered the "I Accuse" exposé in the Senate that Alvarez followed up with an impeachment complaint in the House of Representatives. Alvarez could see no reason for Guingona to have him yanked out of the Cabinet, much more for a person he had fired in April 2001.

Guingona promptly denied the report: "There exists no copy in our files of the letter, no record that it was officially sent out, and its immaterial because there exists no vacancy." He said his signature was forged on the document that landed in the President Management Staff.

Forgery is a crime. That it was done in the Offices of the President and the Vice President shows the extent of criminality that has gripped the country. Will Guingona and the PMS have the matter investigated to the full extent of the law and to the citizenry’s satisfaction?

This is not the first case of forgery exposed in Malacañang under the Arroyo tenure. A civic leader had complained last year that her signature was faked in papers assailing the credentials of another Cabinet appointee. The case was ignored when the Commission on Appointments confirmed the nominee.

Nor is forgery the only mystery to unfold in the innermost corridors of power. An extortionist, apparently put up by an opposition senator to besmirch the President’s reputation, claimed to have been whisked into a secret room in Malacañang where Mrs. Arroyo supposedly threatened to wrest control of two telecommunications firms. For that incident, at least, the man is now facing charges of perjury and falsifying documents, thanks to the justice department.

That national officials must lead the effort to restore trust in justice was stressed again and again in the Summit. Resource speakers from the academe, business and civil society presented to politicians statistics and studies to prove their point. While democracy empowers the people, real power – to crush criminals, for instance – rests at the top. While the community is one of five pillars of the justice system, the authority and resources that make that system work are in the hands of the police, jailors, prosecutors and judges – specifically their chiefs. For the most heinous kidnappings to end, for traffic to flow smoothly, it’s the lawmen who must enforce discipline. And that starts with example.

Interesting papers were submitted at the workshop on "Establishing the Rule of Law and Trust in the Justice System." One, by Anabelle Abaya who had served as President Ramos’s spokesman, explained why court dockets are clogged. She compared the Philippines with California: same size of territory and population. California has half the number of judges than the Philippines, but double the number of cases filed each year. Yet California dockets are unclogged because of its courts’ continuous-trial rule and sectoral arbitration system. By contrast in the Philippines only a few special courts conduct continuous trials with 90-day deadlines. Too, few litigants go to barangay courts for arbitration. Most elevate even the slightest complaints immediately to metropolitan or municipal courts. There lawyers who are paid P500 to P5,000 per hearing make the cases drag. The few who do go to barangay courts invariably end up dissatisfied with "politicized" rulings. After all, barangay captains are politicians, the litigants they arbitrate are their voters. Are they following the example of higher leaders who do nothing but political acrobatics?

Ramon Montaño, former PC-INP chief and Ramos adviser on police affairs, also gave worrisome figures. Everyone must be made to believe that crime does not pay, he said, yet too many criminals are on the loose. More than 200,000 warrants of arrest remain unserved. The PNP cannot achieve the level of visibility to prevent crime because lacks patrol cars. It also does not have enough detectives to solve crimes, or a data bank on criminals for swift exchange of information among provincial commands. Three out of ten judgeships are vacant; there is no regional trial court judge in Sulu and large parts of Muslim Mindanao. Several prosecutors are on the take from crime syndicates and drug lords. Jails and prisons are the weakest link in the system; all kidnappers convicted in the early ’90s have managed to escape. No wonder, former justice secretary Silvestre Bello said, that seven out of ten Filipinos say there’s no justice.

Montaño said that nothing beats tutok-pukpok (monitoring-follow through) by high officials to make the system work. Enforcement from the top makes traffic flow smoothly inside Subic Freeport. Doggedness of the mayor rid Marikina of illegal vendors, stray dogs, and encroachment into public sidewalks by homeowners. Political will also of the mayor scared drug pushers out of Davao City and disciplined residents from exploding firecrackers before or after New Year’s Eve.

If only their examples at the lower levels would be followed by national officials.

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Chief Supt. Enrique Galang, PNP-Bicol chief, says he has relieved from their posts the officers, from colonel to patrolman, named by jailbird Nilo Almendral as his crime gang bosses (Gotcha, 8 May 2002). Dir. Lucas Managuelod, the PNP’s top investigator, is sifting through Almendral’s detailed accounts of kidnapping and robbery to make charges stick.

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Catch Linawain Natin, every Monday, 11:30 p.m., on IBC-13.

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