Looters must be punished

This government is really skewed, not just at the top, but all the way to the bottom. Just listen to what a mere NFA spokesman -- Rex Estoperez -- is saying about looting in Leyte and its implications on the law and the legal system.

To the looters who stormed an NFA warehouse in Alang-alang, Leyte and carted off tens of thousands of bags of rice, Estoperez said: "Share your loot!" Wow. Then, admitting that the NFA was able to get the license plate numbers of the vehicles used in the looting, Estoperez said the looters will not be charged.

I am sure Estoperez got the idea from some bright boys and girls in the Aquino administration who, in an effort to masquerade Noynoy Aquino's inability or lack of interest to pursue the culprits, have managed to dig up some obscure principle about looting becoming excusable under certain dire circumstances.

But Estoperez got his foot caught in his mouth right there where he said what he said, although I am pretty sure he is not even aware of it. To say that looters came in vehicles to cart away tens of thousands of bags of rice cannot by any stretch of the imagination be rendered excusable by dire circumstances.

When people come in a convoy of vehicles to loot an NFA warehouse, that can no longer be the act of people caught in a dire circumstance such as hunger. The looting can no longer be seen as a desperate personal act of survival. It is already looting in the strictest sense of the word and therefore criminal.

So, was Estoperez mouthing an official policy of the Aquino government? Because if he was, then an open invitation has just been made for all Filipinos to break into any NFA warehouse and whatever else they may fancy to ransack and just make off with truckloads of loot under the guise of the human need for survival.

Such a reckless pronouncement can lay the basis for widespread looting and anarchy and I am appalled that Estoperez would even venture forth with such a statement. To me it is a statement so categorical that it could get Estoperez fired.

In fact, I think it is a statement more deserving as a firing offense, instead of that one made by a hapless police general in Eastern Visayas whose only fault was to give an estimate of supertyphoon Yolanda casualties that Noynoy did not like and got fired.

I am not a lawyer so I will just submit to that obscure principle the Aquino government is coughing up about how a desperately hungry man may be forgiven if he breaks into a store to steal food. But my submission is qualified only by the fact that I am unaware of such a legal principle.

The truth of the matter is, I do not subscribe to that law even if it exists. If a hungry man breaks into my home in the dead of night to steal my food, I will eat that man. For if I allow that man to get away with it, there will be two of them the following night, and three the next, and so on and so forth.

If there is such a law, the Aquino government should not have advertised it. If it is unable or unwilling to pursue the looters, then it should just have kept quiet and not do anything. But this going public about how looters can be allowed to escape accountability is an invitation to deep trouble.

When the looting happened in Leyte, video footage showed not hungry men ransacking stores for noodles. They were making off with branded shoes and clothes, pieces of jewelry, and, hold your breath, refrigerators! Yes, refrigerators. And I was not alone in seeing the footages.

As to the ransacking of the Alang-alang, Leyte NFA warehouse, how can a mere NFA spokesman like Estoperez be allowed to say things like allowing looters coming in a convoy of vehicles go scot-free after making off with more than a hundred thousand bags of rice.

Only a dimwit will not see that hunger had nothing to do with that looting. The ransacking of the NFA warehouse was a brazen criminal act that cannot go unpunished. And for Noynoy to go along with what the NFA spokesman said is to make himself impeachable for culpable violation of the Constitution.

When Noynoy was sworn in as president, he took an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the land. Well, several laws of the land have been violated in the course of the looting, from plain and simple robbery in band to economic sabotage.