Shame on who?

Even Mack Sennett would have been impressed. The creator of the Keystone Cops would surely chuckle at life imitating art in the slipshod, slapdash handling of the infamous P6.5 billion wayward shipment of Shabu, starring Customs Commissioner Nick Faeldon and his merry men.

Generous serving of squid. Our representatives furiously tried to untangle the web of specifics of arguably the greatest botched drug bust in Philippine history. Certainly, it would have been the single largest drug haul of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s drug campaign.  While the Senators and Congressmen were hard at work doing the jobs they were elected to do, the Commissioner was frantic with his parallel effort to find friendlier arenas.  The evident intent was to insulate himself from further perception of culpability. So blame the legislators!

Clearly, this was a bold tactic – one highly disrespectful of Congress – to divert public attention from the probe. No one expected the bemedalled marine captain to be muzzled by righteous congressional indignation. You are talking about a prominent ex-fugitive, ex-coup plotter, ex-social media campaigner. 

But really: shame on you? I will expose you? no names? asking Congress to go easy on him? This was not a bombshell worthy of the public’s time, nor of his own elevated reputation. Comm. Faeldon may affect the valorous air of a crusading knight errant tilting against windmills. But, in this battle, who is the real hero and who the real scoundrel?

Ad hominem epidemic. The BOC seems to suffer from this virus of attacking the person rather than the issue. First the imbecile episode. Now this. Surely, this cannot be the way.  Answer the questions. Be iron hided and not onion skinned. Better to point fingers at solutions, not at each other. However low his opinion of the legislators’ character, it has nothing to do with the merit of their perspectives.

Meat and potatoes. But Comm. Faeldon & Co. should explain: (1) the deliberate bypass of the PDEA. The Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act was enacted precisely to correct procedural nightmares. Chain of custody of evidence concerns would often come back to haunt drug arrests. The law painstakingly laid out the proper routing. The script was really quite simple: Who you gonna call? Drug busters!; (2) the absence of a search warrant. They only used a Letter of Authority for seizing the shipment and searching the same. Again, this would result to insufferable problems of admissibility; (3) the turn over of the shipment to the National Bureau of Investigation and not to the PDEA who were already there. The law expressly requires the assumption of jurisdiction by the latter once they show up; (4) the photo opportunities with the owner of the shipment, the selfies and mishandling of evidence by BOC personnel; (5) the use of the express lane when 1st time importers are not entitled to this privilege; (6) the non flagging of the shipment despite knowledge of China origin.

These are but a few of the badges of irregularity. But they are a few too many. No, it is not enough to just refer to them as lapses as Comm. Faeldon would. If at all, these are lapses brought about by believing that the rules did not apply to them.

The law applies to all. The rule of law is in place to protect us as well from those with the sincerest of intentions. Yes, there are contexts in which decisions are made. And the rule of law can, at times, be perceived as the more stubborn “rule of rules.” Perhaps they thought that to blindly follow rigid rules would restrict them from considering all other variables. They could have had good reason to believe that. But so far, the only good reason presented is the contrary advice of a beloved lawyer. Even the President, the most impatient man when it comes to getting the best results for his people, despite all his raging, has not dared to defy the statute books.

We fully understand then Senator Richard Gordon’s generous diagnosis that incompetence is their best case scenario. The worst scenario is that, if not complacent, the BOC were complicit. And what of the 18 crates of shabu, estimated at P22.5 billion, still missing? This is a self inflicted black eye not just to the Duterte administration’s central drug agenda but also to the image of junior officers who once held a nation spellbound to prove they were not complacent nor complicit in their senior officers’ shenanigans.

Guilty pleasures. In showdowns like these, for proper Congressional comportment we look to Congressman Rodolfo Farinas to show us how its done. After all, the Majority Leader and the captain of the Prosecution panel in the Senate Impeachment trial has, time and again, conducted public tutorials on inquisitorial poise. Here we noted how the Legislature’s next great Manong exercised finesse and deferred to the frothing posse of younger members.

We appreciated the flair of several Congressmen. Chairman Ace Barbers had clear command of the Dangerous Drugs Committee hearing. The way he thundered away at Comm. Faeldon may have been disconcerting to watch but his sentiments echoed those of a great majority. He said what needed to be said.

True, he and the members could have treated the witnesses better. There is a constitutional provision on respecting the rights of witnesses in legislative inquiries. But when the witness is a government functionary, scrutiny is expected and is even quite healthy. The dissection of highly sensitive topics in highly sensitive fora is no place for kid gloves. 

The other standouts that I was lucky to witness were Reps. Gwen Garcia, Rodante Marcoleta, Harry Roque, Arnie Teves, Kaka Nograles.

Passages. La Union’s pre-eminent public service family has suffered the loss of one of its greatest champions. Col. Bobby “Bungo” Ortega, also Councilor of Baguio City and its former police chief, father to Manila Councilor Robert Ortega, succumbed to cancer last Sunday. Our deepest sympathies to the family.