Should we congratulate, Cebu City Police Chief Gayotin?

Last Friday afternoon, the local television stations brought the face of Cebu City Police Chief Melvin Gayotin to our living rooms. Keen competition aside, they carried a common news story of the plan of the police chief to file cases against the anti-GMA protestors. The charges would arise from the ugly incident at the gates of the Malacañang sa Sugbu. It was lost to me what specific cases were being readied although what came out rather clear was that the alleged legal cause of action of the police was the reported attempt of the rallyists to get near the President's Cebu office. Gayotin, according to the news reports, spoke of the injuries suffered by two firemen and a policeman as having been inflicted by the militants. To buttress Gayotin's allegations, the tv cameras focused on a fireman who tried touching his lips, to indicate where the invisible wound was.

I had to praise the police chief for announcing that he would do his duty. He was refreshing with his promised action to press charges against "lawless elements". To work on the plan, he said he was going to ask the tv stations for footages of the incident. That's resourcefulness in motion! His intelligence men could not identify the culprits so why not implore the assistance of media as the quickest way to come up with names of prospective accused.

With his pronouncements, I am waiting for the following events to evolve:

First, an official of the national defense will come to Cebu and explain that what the police did was not a remake of the martial law suppression of dissent. "National interest is involved here", he will proclaim. It comes in the form of preventing the people from clamoring the resignation of Her Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Second, a Justice Department official will elucidate that the freedoms of peaceful assembly and of speech can not be enjoyed by people who believe that the president had betrayed public trust and violated the constitution. Their demand for the president's resignation will only foment chaos in our country.

Third, GSM (does this mean Gloria Step down Movement?) stalwart, and the president's namesake, Atty. Gloria Dalawampu, may probably supply the police the details of the "peaceful" dispersal of the rally. Chief Gayotin did not notice how the firemen "were injured" because he was obsessed with knowing the name of the mother of two children who were almost flushed by the water cannon. His plan is to charge the mother with I don't know what but spare the firemen for endangering the lives of the children.

Fourth, doctors will come to Chief Gayotin with medical certificates to support the criminal complaints. As expert witnesses, they will eventually assert that the firemen's hoses recoiled and hit the firemen's faces at the very moment they aimed the jet of water at the demonstrators. The rationale will be, "had there been no rally, there would have been no need for firemen to train their hoses at some people. None would have been injured"

Fifth, the tv cameramen will examine the video footage frame by frame. Their reporters will thoroughly investigate who joined the march and come up with the names of the involved protesters which, they will furnish Chief Gayotin. From such efforts, Chief Gayotin will know whom to hail to court.

While the Chief Gayotin will await for these developments, the 68th and 69th victims of vigilantes will have been murdered. His office will not find it his duty to investigate who the killers are because the victims, who at one time or another had been imprisoned, lived worthless lives. Anyway, even if he would order a careful investigation, his office will not succeed curtly because "no witnesses will dare name the killers".

Chief Gayotin will have achieved his purposes. He will reap the graces of the president for prosecuting the anti-Gloria protesters and at the same time, rid our city of petty thieves and drug addicts courtesy of murderers.