EDITORIAL- Privileged jailbirds

Maybe the judge was impressed by the lineup of 60 wedding sponsors. So Judge Jocelyn Solis Reyes of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court’s Branch 221 allowed the father of the bride to enjoy a three-hour furlough from detention and attend his daughter’s wedding.

The furlough created a stir due to two things. One is that the father of the bride was no ordinary detainee, but one of the principal defendants in the massacre of 58 people in Maguindanao in November 2009. The second point is that if the bride’s father were an ordinary person, would he have been granted the privilege? 

Ordinary detainees suffer enough from the acute inadequacy of the country’s jail facilities. Already congested, the war on drugs followed by the crackdown on violators of city ordinances have filled local jails literally all the way to the ceiling, with detainees taking turns sleeping because there isn’t enough space to lie down. 

Many of these detainees cannot afford to post bail. But if anyone had a daughter about to get married, he would normally want to attend the wedding. Without the right surname, however, or the powerhouse cast of wedding sponsors presented by Zaldy Ampatuan to the trial court, would a judge be swayed to approve the furlough?

The most prominent of the listed sponsors did not show up for the wedding of Bay Nor Aila Cristina at a five-star hotel in Pasay City. Her father, the former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, was escorted to the wedding from the Camp Bagong Diwa detention annex in Taguig by Bureau of Jail Management and Penology guards. Zaldy Ampatuan had previously also been allowed to attend the university graduation of another of his children in Quezon City. 

The public wouldn’t mind such forbearance extended by the courts for humanitarian reasons, if ordinary inmates also enjoyed the same privileges. Ordinary inmates, however, cannot even afford their own lawyers, and public attorneys are already overwhelmed by their work to pursue furloughs for family gatherings of their underprivileged clients. 

In Ampatuan’s case, even government prosecutors had opposed the wedding furlough. Malacañang officials expressed dismay at the court’s order but gave assurance that it would not affect the prosecution of the massacre case. This, however, is beside the point. Allowing a man accused of involvement in the murder of 58 people to party with his clan reinforces perceptions that there are two types of justice in this country: one for the poor, and the other for the likes of Zaldy Ampatuan.