Just seven months after an overloaded ferry capsized in South Korea, leaving more than 300 people dead, top officials of the company that operated the vessel were convicted and received sentences ranging from six to 10 years, with the ship captain getting 36 years in prison. Lower ranking company employees received suspended sentences.
Compare this with the 18 years that it took the Sandiganbayan to render judgment on a graft case filed in connection with the fire in a Quezon City disco that killed 162 people, most of them students celebrating graduation or the end of the school year.
The other day, the anti-graft court’s Fifth Division convicted a former official of the Quezon City government and six of his subordinates for issuing building and fire safety clearances to Ozone Disco Club without inspecting the facility. The seven received sentences ranging from six to 10 years. Also sentenced were two board directors of the club, who were convicted in 2001 of multiple homicide and serious injuries, for which they received a prison term of four years and fined over P25 million each.
Among the survivors of the conflagration, however, rejoicing is not complete. They are aware that the ruling of the anti-graft court can still be appealed and may reach the Supreme Court. Will the process take another 18 years?
Yesterday there was a lot of snickering when the secretary of justice remarked that the slow prosecution of the Ozone tragedy was an isolated case. In fact two decades is the norm for litigation in this country, whether it’s a criminal case or civil suit.
The notoriously slow administration of justice is often cited as a major disincentive to investments in this country. Justice delayed, it is often said, is justice denied. In several areas, injustice drives people to join insurgent groups. The inability to render justice also breeds impunity, as seen in the continued proliferation of political assassinations and armed attacks on left-wing militants and journalists.
As in red tape in the bureaucracy, slowness in the administration of justice opens opportunities for corruption. Like a snail, like molasses – all the metaphors for slowness can put to shame the pace of Philippine justice. The glacial pace itself is an injustice.