Failon tormentors' turn to face the law
It’s tough for P-Noy’s search team to fill up key positions. Vetting for clean and able bureaucrats must fulfill P-Noy’s campaign promise of good governance. Here’s a tip for the searchers: get the Civil Service Commission list of Dangal ng Bayan awardees in the past decade or so. Those tested veteran public servants must be ripe for posting in tougher jobs.
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Weathermen simply discontinued tracking Typhoon Basyang after dusk last Tuesday. The dereliction shows a bigger problem. Government isn’t ever on the ball in disaster mitigation, rescue and relief. The usual excuse is lack of equipment and funds to do the job, when what’s really missing is sense of duty. The latest deaths by drowning and crushing in Metro Manila mimic what happens everyday elsewhere in the Philippines. More needless deaths and crippling will occur unless local and national officials organize and empower Filipinos to save themselves from disasters.
P-Noy rightly upbraided the weathermen, not so much for erroneous forecasting than failing to plot the howler’s path after it hit land. Their last monitor was at 5 p.m., which they relayed to P-Noy at 8 p.m., whereupon they probably knocked off work like most everyone else. By then most Metro Manilans were home watching TV newscasts that Basyang will strike Central Luzon 100-150 kilometers north. Little did they know it would hit them directly in four hours, like last year’s no-warning Storm Ondoy.
That Metro Manila was in the storm’s eye roused officialdom from sleep. Hopefully they’d stay awake long enough to realize that deaths from flashflood, landslide, earthquake, tsunami, land-air-sea accidents, and fire are preventable. It’s a government-wide task. Agencies in charge of health, science, education, transportation, trade, police, military, conservation, shelter and food must devise safety and emergency templates.
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Last year the police tried bizarrely to pin Ted Failon and household for the suicide of his wife Trina. They failed, but only after bullying the family and staining Ted’s name. Now it’s their turn to face the law. And the victims are determined to make them pay for it. For Ted, it’s to defend not just the family but press freedom as well.
Charged before the Ombudsman this week were nine high officers, for unjust incrimination, arrest and detention, coercion and perjury. The accused: PNP Metro Manila head Roberto Rosales, Quezon City chief Elmo San Diego, Superintendents Franklin Moises Mabanag and Gerardo Ratuita, and Inspectors Enrico Figueroa, Cherry Lou Donato, Roberto Razon, Jay Borromeo and Erlinda Garcia.
They were also held to blame for their men’s maltreatment of Ted’s sister-in-law Pamela Arteche, and housemates Pacifico Apacible, Carlota Morbos, Freda Bollicer and Glen Polan. An administrative probe by the Police Commission concluded that the arrests indeed were illegal. Coming only late last month, the report became basis for the Failon household’s complaint.
The victims recounted the cops’ abuse when Trina shot herself in the head at home mid-morning of Apr. 15, 2009. From the start the four helpers were coerced to implicate Ted, Pamela and another sister. Refusing, they were rounded up the next day allegedly for obstructing justice. Lawyers tried in vain to stop the arrests being made by Mabanag, overseen by Rosales and San Diego. More intimidation ensued on the way to the station. At one point the cops locked up the four in a van, air-con off and windows and doors shut, under the hot sun.
The cops accused Ted too of obstruction. This, despite his submitting to four hours of questioning at the station that night after the self-shooting. They took it against him for spending more time on Trina’s recovery, their elder daughter’s flight home, and the younger child’s trauma. Next night the cops broke into the ICU to paraffin-test Trina’s arms and hands, then needled up with life-saving I/V fluids. Pamela and a brother were taken in for standing in the way. At the station the siblings too were threatened to blame Ted.
The arrests were without court warrant. Never were the arrestees read their rights. The officers lied to inquest fiscals and internal affairs to cover up their misdeeds, the complainants swore.
Ted also sued the nine officers for damages. He recalled that, from doctors’ reports, Trina had stabilized enough to undergo skull surgery on the night of April 16. But with the cops’ ruckus at the ICU — a person’s hearing is the last of the senses to go — they distressed her to death, Ted cries. The police further maliciously prosecuted his in-laws and household, even though the NBI concluded suicide in May 2009. False police updates sullied his reputation as broadcaster. So Ted is demanding P10 million in moral and exemplary recompense.
Ted believes that the irregular police work on his tragedy was meant to scare, possibly muzzle, him as a crusading journalist. In tandem with Korina Sanchez on radio he was then raking up scam after scam of a vindictive regime. Scores of colleagues, some his friends, already had been silenced by death or duress. Insiders had told him that the same biggie who was harassing Ramon Tulfo and Marites Vitug wanted him off the air. Meanwhile, the thievery went on and whistleblowers ironically were the ones being charged. All this made Ted decide to fight back.
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“To fill one’s life with material things alone is to feel the emptiness of living.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ
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