Does due process depend on status?

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws. That’s the first section of the Bill of Rights, the soul of the Constitution.

There’s clearly no due process in vigilante killings of suspected drug pushers. The executioners operate outside the law. Hooded and under cover of night, they abduct supposed neighborhood shabu peddlers, for summary firing squad. No reading of one’s rights, no preliminary investigation by a prosecutor, no judicial hearing of the accused’s side, no last request.

His critics ask where due process is in President Rodrigo Duterte’s naming and shaming of “narco-generals” from raw intelligence reports. Or in “shoot-on-sight” statements, albeit supposedly hyperbolic, after similarly identifying “narco-politicos” and “narco-judges,” including ones long dead. Supposedly they’ve been tried and convicted by publicity, by the highest official of the land.

Duterte’s defenders ask in turn where due process is when the rich and powerful are involved. How come that a town mayor can use due process as excuse to stay in office while pointing to his Junior son as the real town drug lord? Is he not the most responsible official for law and order in his town, which means turning in even his own son, but who conveniently is now hiding abroad? Meantime, reportedly six thugs figured and were slain in a shootout with cops at his home, house servants directly implicated him to narco-trading, and P88.8 million worth of shabu was found in Junior’s house right beside his. Junior, who had been arrested five times before, was invariably let off to allegedly continue narco-trafficking. There could be 500 million reasons, as reflected in returned checks, found in Junior’s house, paid to police-military generals and civilian officials.

Due process has different meanings, depending on social status.

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There’s no question that the country needs steel mills. But may such a factory be built in the middle of farmlands beside a residential community? That issue has been bugging rustic Plaridel, Bulacan, for four years now. Resolution must come from the Duterte administration that inherited it. President Rodrigo Duterte had encountered a similar case, as mayor of Davao City.

Townsfolk fear the rise of a steel plant in their midst. The heavy industry will compete with their water supply, dirty their surroundings, and sicken them. The social costs could far outweigh the economic gains, says the residents’ Kalikasang Dalisay para sa Mamamayan (Kadamay).

Reportedly the factory is to be the biggest in the country. It would produce 1.2 million metric tons of steel rebars per year. To do that, it would burn eight trucks (150 cubic meters) of bunker fuel a day to melt billets at 1000°C. Then, to cool the resulting steel bars, it would flush 864,000 liters of water, drawn daily from nearby Angat River. Two hundred dump trucks per day would haul in and out the raw materials and finished products. Support facilities would depend on deep wells for further water.

The effects on health and livelihoods are Kadamay’s prime worries. Accumulating oxides in the lungs, factory and vehicle fumes would cause respiratory ailments. Riverside irrigation and fishing would be choked. Risk is high of oil contamination of farmlands. Plots already have flooded up with the paving in 2014 of the 16 hectares on which the plant would rise.

The issue is multifaceted. Agencies in charge of land and water use, clean air, agriculture, irrigation, flood control, traffic, health, and other concerns first must clear the project. So Kadamay is pleading with about 25 government offices to be heard.

It pins hope on the Dept. of Agrarian Reform (DAR). Allegedly there was a basic legal breach. The heavy-industry estate sits on irrigated farmlands. Twenty-eight plots that comprise the 16 hectares had been reclassified from agricultural to heavy industrial. That cannot be done, Kadamay insists, because the plots were handed out as land for the landless. Since it forbids the conversion of land awarded via agrarian reform, Kadamay says, the DAR must rescind the reclassification.

The Plaridel mayor has vetoed a municipal zoning ordinance that followed the reclassification. A Congress committee that heard the issue has asked the DAR to intervene. Suggestions are to relocate the steel mill to Subic or Clark industrial zones, also in Central Luzon. A similar plant that was erected in Davao years ago is 20 kilometers away from the residential center. Then-mayor Duterte consented only after it hurdled the legal and environmental issues.

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