EDITORIAL - Garma’s karma

If all the serious crimes being imputed on Royina Garma are true, the former general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office deserves more than detention for contempt in the relatively comfortable premises of the Senate.

Garma has been accused of corruption when she was a police officer and then as PCSO chief. Worse is the accusation that brought Garma before the so-called quad committee of the House of Representatives: that she was involved in the execution of three Chinese drug traffickers at the Davao penal colony in August 2016.

Last Friday, Garma was implicated in another serious crime. Facing the House quad committee, police Lt. Col. Santi Mendoza tagged Garma and Commissioner Edilberto Leonardo of the National Police Commission as the masterminds in the murder of PCSO board secretary Wesley Barayuga in July 2020.

Leonardo is one of five former and incumbent police officers tagged as suspects by the International Criminal Court in its investigation of possible crimes against humanity committed in Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody campaign against illegal drugs. Mendoza said Leonardo had described Barayuga, a lawyer and retired police general, as a high-value drug trafficking target. Other reports, however, said Barayuga was executed because he was set to talk about anomalies in the PCSO under Garma that had led to billions in losses in what is supposed to be a major revenue-generating agency.

Mendoza testified that Garma coursed through Leonardo P300,000, part of which was paid to the hired gun on a motorcycle who shot dead Barayuga as he was driving home in a PCSO service car provided by Garma. Leonardo forwarded to Mendoza a photo of Barayuga reportedly provided by Garma and gave the green light for the hit, Mendoza told the House panel.

Garma opted for early retirement as a colonel in the Philippine National Police to head the PCSO in 2019. She had spent much of her service in the PNP on assignment in Davao City, but she was Cebu City police chief before she moved to the PCSO.

At the quad panel hearing, she was accused of funneling P2 million in PCSO funds to a party-list she had set up, the Samahan ng Totoong Larong may Puso or STL, and of hiring seven of her relatives in the PCSO.

The public is waiting for criminal charges to be filed against Garma. At the same time, lawmakers will have to find out whether Garma managed to get away with the alleged offenses through the blessings of higher officials. Anyone who enabled her to abuse public office must also be held accountable.