3 gov’t branches thwarting reforms

Is this just?

For four days – well beyond the legal 36 hours – 79 farmers were jailed in Kidapawan until charged in the bloody police dispersal of their anti-hunger picket. They stayed detained nearly two more weeks, unable to post P948,000-bail, P12,000 each – an unaffordable sum for penurious peasants.

Yet the Sandiganbayan granted bail, P500,000 each, to pork barrel fixer Janet Lim Napoles and Masbate ex-Rep. Rizalina Seachon Lañete, for plunder of P108.4 million. And plunder is supposedly non-bailable.

Could members of the three government branches be conspiring to thwart justice?

The ponente of the Sandiganbayan bail ruling is new Justice Geraldine Faith Econg. She joined the anti-graft tribunal’s fourth division only in February, sworn in on January 25 upon appointment by President Noynoy Aquino. Justice Econg hardly had time to hear Lañete’s bail petition, filed right after the latter’s indictment in December 2014.

Lañete is with haciendero P-Noy’s Liberal Party. Good timing was the bail grant. She can now campaign for election as governor. Last April 12 in a rally in Masbate, the wife of the haciendero-presidentiable reportedly announced that Lañete would soon be freed. That came true the next day, when the Sandiganbayan fourth division made its surprising bail ruling. How the strange sequence of events came about remains untold. What’s certain, though, is that the freed plunder indictee, owing to deep gratitude, will now campaign hard for the haciendero.

P-Noy broke the Constitution twice to position Justice Econg. One was in picking her and another justice from a single shortlist of nominees of the Judicial and Bar Council. The rule is for the President to select only one from separate shortlists for every vacancy, which the JBC dutifully had submitted. The other breach was in P-Noy effecting the appointment during the election ban, Jan. 10 to June 8, 2016.

Moments after the fourth division’s bail grant, the fifth division did the same for Napoles and plunder co-accused ex-APEC party list Rep. Edgar Valdez. Napoles won’t benefit from the bail, because serving a life term for serious illegal detention. But ex-lawmakers Lañete and Valdez would. Same possibly with Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla, both also petitioning the court for bail from plunder detention. Weeks ago the Supreme Court gave bail to plunder indictee Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile. The “humanitarian” reason cited was that, at age 92, he presumably was sickly. There’s no such ground in the statute books. Enrile did not even invoke age or health in his bail petition. Upon release he in fact resumed his habit of dominating Senate hearings.

No wonder critics decry as merely for show P-Noy’s “Daang Matuwid” anti-corruption drive. It was fun while it lasted. He’s now taking down the stage props, as his term expires in two months.

Lañete and Valdez’s bail were given as the Sandiganbayan divisions separately saw weak evidence against them. That puts in question the case buildup and prosecution by the Department of Justice and the Ombudsman. Were the raps shoddily prepared and presented on purpose? Meantime, the DOJ-Ombudsman ignore hard proof of graft by P-Noy’s LP favorites: Transport Sec. Joseph Abaya in the railways scams, Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala for rice and garlic price gouging, and Budget Sec. Florencio Abad for multibillion-peso pork fund diversions.

The Kidapawan peasants had demonstrated at the highway to ask government for help. Severe drought had withered their crops. Police gunfire felled three of them. Even the elderly, youngsters, and pregnant were jailed for weeks. They shouldn’t have picketed, Press Sec. Herminio Coloma hissed. P-Noy already had instructed Alcala to distribute billions of pesos in rice and seedlings to El Niño-ravaged farm villages. It turned out that Alcala had not complied.

The haciendero elite controls Congress too. Abaya, Alcala, and Abad used to be congressmen. Lawmakers continue to fund them – to enrich big plantations and politicos, at the expense of famished farmers.

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On the municipal waters of seaside Cabugao, Ilocos Sur, a barge has been rusting for two years now. The crew reportedly was illegally mining black sand (magnetite) when a typhoon ran the vessel aground. Subsequent unloading of the contraband and other minerals, the rust, and fuel leak have destroyed corals and poisoned the waters. Fish are killed in the wild and in cages; fisher folk’s livelihoods are threatened.

The barge needs to be removed. Municipal officials have asked the Coast Guard, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, and Environment Management Bureau for help, to no avail.

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Willie Nep’s “Pang-GULO ng Pilipinas,” the show that happens only once every six years, will be staged on April 30, at the Music Museum, Greenhills Commercial Center, San Juan City. Watch it before you vote.

For reservations, call TicketWorld at (02) 891-9999; or Music Museum, (02) 721-6726.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

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