The untouchables

It’s not too late for President Duterte to backpedal on his all-out support for police Superintendent Marvin Marcos and the 18 other cops indicted for the death of Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa and fellow inmate Raul Yap in a Leyte jail last November.

Why should Du30 backpedal?

If Marcos, et al killed Espinosa and Yap with “premeditation and abuse of authority,” as two Senate committees and the National Bureau of Investigation concluded after separate probes, the President is sworn to uphold the law and must allow the appropriate penalties to be imposed on the guilty.

If the President prefers to ignore the law, he should at least be careful in brushing aside allegations that Marcos and some of his men were receiving drug payola from the Espinosas. The mayor and his son Kerwin could not have engaged in drug trafficking without the knowledge of the local police. And Marcos at the time headed the regional police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group. How many times has the President said he hates drugs, and especially cops who engage in drug deals?

On the other hand, if Marcos, et al were simply carrying out the order of higher-ups (still unnamed) to execute Espinosa, who was on Duterte’s list of narco politicians, the cops performed such a sloppy job that it would be risky to return them to the service.

If Marcos was simply doing his job as ordered, he can be rewarded in other ways. The President must show the nation that punishment will be carried out – if not for an extrajudicial killing, then for a job badly done.

That kind of work might be good enough in a city controlled by a political kingpin, but it won’t pass muster on the national stage.

Just ask Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who in his days as a cop was no stranger to summary executions. There’s a bungalow in Las Piñas that neighbors say remains haunted by the spirits of 13 Red Scorpion Group kidnappers killed in a raid by then colonel Lacson and his men during which they rescued US oil firm Unocal’s vice president Michael Barnes. RSG leader Alfredo de Leon was also killed in another raid in Bulacan in February 1993.

Two years later, Lacson and his men also killed 11 members of the Kuratong Baleleng robbery gang in a supposed encounter along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. So Ping Lacson won’t take any BS about what happened at the Leyte sub-provincial jail between Marcos’ team and Espinosa.

Lacson, who headed one of the two Senate panels that looked into the twin killings, blurted out a rare profanity in public yesterday on news that Marcos and his men had been returned to duty.

* * *

Because of the weakness of the nation’s justice system, many Filipinos support short cuts to law enforcement and a take-no-prisoners approach to crime.

This sentiment has brought persons like Lacson to the Senate, and Rodrigo Duterte to a landslide win as president.

That sentiment has also kept Duterte’s approval ratings comfortably high as he enters his second year in power. It has muted public criticism of the continuing drug-related executions – an average of nine killings daily, by the Philippine National Police (PNP)’s own count.

But now even Lacson has done a Du30 and blurted out an expletive over an act that the President clearly believes is in support of his vicious war on illegal drugs.

“It is not even a reinstatement. Rather, it was back-to-duty status after serving his four-month suspension order incorporated in a ‘slap-on-the-wrist’ administrative penalty,” Lacson lamented. “In sum, there is a phrase to describe this whole damn thing: p***ng ina!”

* * *

The rules prohibit reinstatement of a cop facing a serious criminal case. PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa, who has blown hot and cold on Marcos, explained that the reinstatement was ordered after the end of the four-month suspension for the administrative aspect of the two killings.

If Dela Rosa is hoping for a career shift to politics upon his retirement, he should stop insulting people’s intelligence and reason with his boss on the need to impose discipline in the PNP even while its members are engaged in a dirty war on drug trafficking.

The President may be worried that his cops will be spooked by indictments and suspension if they continue killing drug suspects who resist arrest – the infamous “nanlaban” excuse for cops to shoot first and ask questions later.

But Duterte should also be worried by shoddy police work and the brazen abuse of police power, which in the long run will erode public support for his war on drugs. There are limits to public tolerance for police abuses, especially when lives are involved. Not all the drug suspects executed by cops were notorious narco politicians. Children and innocent adults have been killed in this war by careless if not downright evil cops.

There has been a systematic effort to clear Marcos and his men of all the charges, with the original double murder complaint now downgraded to homicide.

Downgrading requires court approval, but our courts are as hopeless as Congress in providing checks and balances to the executive. When certain magistrates aren’t selling justice to the highest bidder, they’re licking the boots of the appointing power to get a promotion or desired assignment.

The House of Representatives is happily and hopelessly a rubberstamp of Malacañang – at least while Duterte’s approval ratings remain high. Once the numbers start sinking, Du30 will see the rats abandoning his ship en masse.

Only the Senate offers some hope of resistance to executive policies that tend to breed impunity. Lacson and opposition senators lamented Marcos’ reinstatement, but perhaps even administration senators will surprise us.

As of yesterday, however, the rehabilitation of Espinosa’s killers was almost complete, with only a court acquittal missing.

Marvin Marcos and his men are now untouchables.