EDITORIAL - VIP suspects

How did Ramona Revilla, implicated in the heinous offense of fratricide, manage to hop on a commercial flight and leave the country? It’s not enough for authorities concerned to scratch their behinds and wash their hands of the sordid affair. Someone should be held accountable for this, starting with the police investigators who were supposed to have at least kept her under close watch, even when she was still seen as a principal witness rather than a suspect in her own brother’s murder.

Ramona is 22 – way past the age below 18 that is covered by the Juvenile Justice Law – and could be detained as soon as she was formally indicted on Nov. 1 for murder and frustrated murder. Detention was apparently complicated by her influential brother, Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., who reportedly rushed to his half-sister’s aid and – according to police records, although he would later insist it was not true – took custody of her ostensibly so she could have a medical checkup because she appeared traumatized.

If an impoverished fishmonger had appeared traumatized and in shock after murdering her own brother, the suspect would not receive even aspirin from the police, and she would be allowed to step out of her cell only for a trip to the toilet. But because Ramona belonged to a prominent clan, Parañaque cops readily spared her from the bedbugs, cockroaches and mosquitoes in their detention cell. If they had indeed allowed her famous half-brother to take her into custody, it was as much a fault of investigators who suffer from the belief, not entirely baseless, that the prudent cop knows enough not to cross VIPs in this country.

The case, inevitably, has revived observations that there are two types of justice in the Philippines: one for the poor, and the other for the rich and influential – the type with enough wealth to support about 80 children by several women, giving each household an impressive P1 million a month for upkeep. The Revilla patriarch, retired from show biz and newly retired from government, must have an enormous pension fund.

The public perception is that either her family’s wealth and influence allowed Ramona Revilla to flee, or the bungling of police investigators did. Whatever the reason, her flight revives observations that only blind fools think justice is blind and the law is applied equally in this country.