EDITORIAL - Will Lim get his travel wish?

David Lim Jr., who is facing charges after shooting and wounding another man in a road rage incident, is seeking court permission to travel abroad for a cruise with his family. Already out on bail, Lim has a fairly good chance of getting what he wants. One thing going for him – his request is not likely to put the court in a bad light if granted.

The petition of Lim, while certain to make many in the public uncomfortable and even disdainful, is at least not deceitful. It does not hew to the common trend among many similarly situated individuals who employ all sorts of ruses to obtain court concessions. Lim's plea does not tend to cast the court in a bad light, unlike when they grant some form of reprieve on humanitarian or medical considerations to otherwise perfectly healthy individuals.

At least in this case, Lim is telling the court like it is. He just wants to travel and that's that. He has not yet been convicted of any crime. And the fact that he has been granted bail can be interpreted to mean the court does not consider him a flight risk. Nothing can, in the normal course of events, be more natural than for the court to allow Lim his desire.

The real stumbling block to Lim's petition is not legal but public perception. Lim is a nephew of businessman Peter Lim who, for a time early on, had been in the crosshairs of no less than President Duterte. Lim's father and namesake himself got involved in a fatal road accident just very shortly before his own brush with the law.

To be involved as the aggressor in a road rage incident traditionally does not sit well with the public. More so with the present-day public steeped in modern gadgetry and deeply immersed in social media and can, therefore, get easily whipped into an emotional frenzy over human episodes of bad behavior caught on camera and quickly spread over the Internet.

Other than these extraneous perceptions that are really outside the core legal issues in Lim's case, he does indeed stand a fair chance of getting his travel abroad. Will he use the chance, if given, to flee? We do not think so. The risks far outweigh the realities. Given the Lims' wealth, his cases are not something the best lawyers money can hire cannot extricate him from. For this Lim, at least, the prospects look very good.