The weakest link

Law enforcement agencies, prosecution service, the judiciary, the penal system and the citizenry are said to be the five pillars of the criminal justice system in the country. Any shortcoming, or lapse, or failure of any one of the five pillars will frustrate the ends of justice and this might cause the whole structure to collapse, to put it dramatically.

A case in point is the court’s grant of bail to former Rep. Michelle Gumabao, a.k.a. Dennis Roldan, the suspected mastermind of a busted kidnap-for-ransom (KFR) syndicate. This instant case threatens the very foundation of these pillars where the blindfolded lady of justice stands.

I could not agree more on the laments of the family of the KFR victim, three-year old Keinshi Yu when Pasig regional trial court (RTC) branch 261 judge Agnes Reyes-Carpio approved last Tuesday the bail petition of Roldan. He got out from Pasig City jail yesterday after his defense lawyers led by Sigfried Fortun paid his bail bond of P500,000. And since the former actor-turned politician paid it through a bond surety, he got his temporary liberty by paying less than that amount.

It cannot be said that the Yu family were over-reacting on this bail petition victory by the lawyers for the accused. Their reaction should be viewed more as an expression of concern for possible flight from justice of the principal suspect of this celebrated KFR case. With so many precedent cases of jailbreaks and flight out of the country of suspects, even those with hold-departure orders (HDOs), I cannot blame the Yu family for raising fuss in Roldan’s case.

Given the resources and obvious influence of the accused, it is quite understandable why the Yu family did not only stand aghast over the bail grant to Roldan by the lady judge but they were also up in arms on the eventual outcome of their case against the ex-solon and his KFR cohorts.

The state prosecutors handling this case would definitely appeal and file for a motion for reconsideration to withdraw this bail grant to Roldan.

I bumped into Immigration chief Alipio Fernandez yesterday and he told me that Roldan has been in the HDO alert list as early as February this year. Immigration authorities posted the list in all of the airports to prevent Roldan from leaving the country. While Fernandez gave this guarantee against the escape of Roldan, I reminded him, however, of the escape of Zhang Du, one of the seven Chinese nationals accused in the kidnapping case of Jackie Tiu who escaped right from the BI detention center in Bicutan in May last year.

Fernandez disclosed at least three BI personnel, including the BI jail warden, were relieved and criminally charged for the escape of this Chinese national, one of the seven KFR suspects in the Tiu case. But the sad fact is this will not bring back to the folds of the law this escaped KFR suspect who had gone back to Beijing because he got away through highly suspicious issuance of BI deportation order.

Who authorized and signed this deportation order? Certainly, this was not done just at the level of the jail warden. Zhang Du was deported and was even escorted at the airport by BI agents? So for sure, there was a deportation order. So who signed it? This was not an ordinary escape incident.

The escape of Zhang Du was just one of the tragic developments in the Jacky Tiu kidnapping case. The life of Tiu has been turned upside down since she became a victim of this heinous crime when she was kidnapped on Sept. 27, 2001. She was safely released by her kidnappers on Oct. 4 of the same year after her father paid the kidnappers their P10 million ransom demand.

But operatives from the defunct National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force (NAKTAF) led by Gen. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. successfully recovered the ransom money and were able to arrest all the suspects in their follow-up operations that ended at the Philippine Plaza Hotel in Roxas Boulevard in Pasay City. The chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) at that time is now Department of Transportations and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza.

I remember these very well because it was the first success story of a KFR case where there was cooperation by the victim and her family and no less than President Arroyo took special attention to it. Mrs. Arroyo even cited Jacky Tiu’s case as a model of how the five pillars of the criminal justice system works as part of her state of the nation address (SONA) in 2002.

The KFR case was raffled off to RTC Judge Antonio Carbonel of Branch 27 San Fernando City, La Union. But during the course of the trial, the judge started to show bias to the accused and prompted the prosecution lawyers and the victim herself to ask the Supreme Court (SC) for the transfer of her case to Manila. Naturally, this caused further delays.

Former SC Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. approved the request for the transfer and Tiu’s case was raffled off to Manila RTC judges. Her case is now with RTC judge Placido Marquez.

More than five years later, though, and several PNP chiefs after Mendoza, the case of Jacky Tiu has yet to see the light of day. The realities on the ground are disheartening for any weak-hearted people to be in this situation. Her case suffered setbacks but Tiu remains undaunted.

The family of Roger Yu and his son Keinshi are precisely in the same situation. I just hope and pray for the Yu family to continue to have faith in the country’s justice system like Tiu despite these temporary setbacks.

The feisty Tiu would not certainly gamble her stake for justice. "I don’t think I can get justice if money does the talking. I won’t pay to get justice because justice is mine," Tiu told me the last time she was here in Manila retelling her ordeals during the trials of her case in the past.

And to think President Arroyo even worked for the abolition of the death penalty where KFR is one of the heinous crimes punishable by lethal injection.

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Cruel jokes. Last Monday’s state of the nation address (SONA) of the President before Congress is still the talk of the town and fast becoming the butt of punsters and jokesters. It is bandied about there is no truth to Palace disclosures that Mrs. Arroyo was downed by flu. Her bitter detractors suspected she is actually afflicted with hepatitis because they noted she was all yellow in her neck up to her ears wearing big gold heirloom jewelry in her SONA.

The other joke is that Israel launched its military strikes against Lebanon for coddling Hezbollah. Because of Mrs. Arroyo’s false claims in her SONA, the Philippines is said to be in danger because of HERbola.

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