Smokin’

It’s not always true that where there’s smoke there’s fire. Sometimes it could be really just smoke. The recent brouhaha over “influential forces” allegedly interceding on behalf of the real estate developer arrested on March 6 outside a casino hotel in Manila turned out to be much ado about nothing. The culprit – the “influential forces” – turned out to be a single “force” – Mindoro Governor Alfonso Umali Jr., who had phoned the Philippine National Police chief about the arrest.

At the regular bi-monthly meeting of the National Advisory Group (NAG) of the PNP last Tuesday – of which both of us are members – Gov. Umali’s attendance was greatly anticipated, and his arrival caused an excited stir around the table. But we had to proceed with the business of the meeting, and was it my imagination or did we really go through the agenda with efficient dispatch? Anyway, we managed to adjourn ahead of our two-hour meeting limit (our good chairman is very strict about this), to take on the unofficial part of the meeting, which was to grill the good governor, who good-naturedly took the hot seat. Being chismis-ers aside from NAG-ers, we ganged up on him hoping for some juicy behind-the-headlines morsels. 

Yes, he did call the chief of police, Umali readily admitted, after receiving a distress call from the arrested suspect’s lawyer, who happens to be a provincemate from Mindoro. In fact, the lawyer used to be a councilor of Calapan city, capital of Mindoro, and had done some legal work for the governor in the past. The lawyer claimed to have a quash order from the Court of Appeals (CA), and therefore claimed the arrest to have been illegal.

Confused like many other people on the legal intricacies of the supposed CA quash order on the arrest warrant issued by a lower court, we NAGged our way to a clarification from the PNP. What the CA did in its ruling last November, we were told, was order the lower court to dismiss the charges against the developer in question, which would then lead to the voiding of the arrest warrant. But, it was pointed out, it is still the lower court (a regional trial court in Pampanga) that will have to act to dismiss the case and cancel the warrant – which the lower had not done on the day the arrest was made outside the casino hotel, thus the arrest was perfectly legal, based on an outstanding and active arrest warrant. By the way, the lower court still has not dismissed the case to this day, since the Department of Justice has apparently filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which issued two weeks ago a temporary restraining order on the implementation of the CA ruling. Really, lawyers are masters at complicating matters.

On the alleged delisting of the developer from the PNP Most Wanted list – which is also clouded in smoke of controversy – someone whispered to us that the aforementioned lawyer had requested that the suspect be delisted, by virtue of the same CA quash order, and the police duly noted – but did not act on – the request, leading the suspect and his people to rest easy and perhaps let their guard down. “Ayan, nahuli siya (There, he got caught).”