EDITORIAL – What happened to the ‘tried and tested formula’?

And so for the second time, Negros Occidental Rep. Julio Ledesma IV took a bride yesterday. His wedding to actress Assunta de Rossi reminds us: What ever happened to the investigation of the kidnapping of the congressman’s children? Cristina Julieta Victoria and her younger brother Julio Carlos Tomas were on their way to school when they were waylaid during the morning rush hour in Greenhills, San Juan last Sept. 13. Armed men smashed the window on the driver’s side of the children’s van and shot up the vehicle’s tires. They then dragged the children into a getaway vehicle and fled.

A congressman’s two children are abducted at gunpoint during rush hour on one of the busiest streets in Metro Manila. The kidnapping naturally deepened public concern over the deteriorating peace and order situation. President Arroyo ordered the Philippine National Police to solve the case. The cops worked with Ledesma and his future bride. Five days later, the two children mysteriously walked to freedom, dropped off by their abductors near the Makati Medical Center.

Ledesma would only say that a "secret but tried and tested formula" led to his children’s release. He laughed when asked about speculations that the formula involved the payment of ransom amounting to millions of pesos. The kindest speculation about the formula was that it involved a payoff monitored by cops, who would then go after the kidnappers once the victims have been released.

If that’s what the formula entails, it delivered only half of the intended results in the case of Ledesma’s children. The victims were freed, but where are the culprits? Where’s the ransom money, if there was indeed a payoff? The biggest argument against ransom payments is that they send the message that crime pays, which encourages more kidnappings. In this case, the culprits managed to take their money and run. We don’t even have a clue about the identity of the mastermind, although there is now an attempt to link the kidnapping to a purported destabilization attempt that includes the assassination of a Cabinet member. If this plot is real, it gives more urgency to the solution of the Ledesma children’s kidnapping. And solution does not end with the victims walking to freedom. The culprits must be caught and the brains unmasked so they cannot strike again.