EDITORIAL - Be ready for the legal battle

Addressing the public fury over large-scale corruption calls for accountability and punishment, with no sacred cows.

This entails spotting the anomalies, identifying the perpetrators, prosecuting and convicting them and ensuring that they suffer the consequences of grand-scale thievery of people’s money.

Ongoing probes show how difficult the process can be. Yesterday, as the Independent Commission for Infrastructure opened its first full week of work, it denounced reports of “widespread destruction and tampering” of official documents in the Department of Public Works and Highways.

While ICI chair Andres Reyes Jr. did not name the culprit, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon ordered the preventive suspension of the DPWH district engineer for Baguio City, Rene Zarate.

Reyes, a retired associate justice of the Supreme Court, warned that any attempt to destroy, falsify or hide DPWH records, which are government property, “carries both administrative and criminal liability.”

Whether the warning will be heeded by people who are trying to save their necks remains to be seen.

At the same time, Brice Hernandez, who has been sacked as assistant district engineer for the first district of Bulacan, failed to fulfill his promise to turn over to Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson a computer believed to contain incriminating data on flood control corruption.

Lacson, who chairs the Blue Ribbon committee, had endorsed a 12-hour leave from Senate detention for Hernandez last Saturday, allowing the engineer to go home to retrieve documents and a computer containing what could be a proverbial smoking gun in the corruption scandal.

But Hernandez changed his mind and did not bring the computer. Lacson suspected that Hernandez might have been spooked by the presence of members of the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group when the engineer was escorted to his home by agents of the Senate’s Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms. But Hernandez, according to his lawyer, merely decided to turn over the computer directly to the ICI.

At least it looked like Hernandez, who is seeking witness protection, was merely spooked by the police tail. Witnesses in many other criminal cases have been harassed, involuntarily disappeared or murdered. Others have been paid to recant testimonies.

This is just the start of the flood control probes. Those who are pursuing accountability and punishment befitting the crime must contend with many other serious obstacles, beginning with snail-paced justice.

Prosecution can be deliberately slowed until a controversial case has receded from national memory and sufficient time has elapsed for the defendant to seek acquittal by invoking “inordinate delay” in his or her prosecution.

This is a war for accountability, and the warriors must be fully equipped and ready for battle.