Wrong has no warrant

Way back during the Roman times, they classified two types of what is considered wrong. The first was called malum in se, something that is wrong in itself such as lying, murder and theft. The second was malum prohibitum, what is wrong only because it has been prohibited. A good example is tying your seat belt.

We mention this because lately we read the most incredible types of crimes. The latest, for instance, is the case of Enrico Reyes who has been charged of estafa because he had been passing himself off as a priest to the extent that he conducted "Masses" in order to be able to extract money from his victims. He was so sure of himself that some of his victims were members of the National Bureau of Investigation, including the Deputy Director for Investigative Service, the Chief of the Reaction, Arrest and Interdiction Division and Head of the Special Action Unit.

The Chief of the Reaction, Arrest and Interdiction Division, Ruel Lasala, met Enrico Reyes at the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and became suspicious of Reyes because he was so persistent in his demands for money for his alleged feeding program. Lasala called the Chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila and they said that there was no priest listed under the name Enrico Reyes. When Reyes approached Vicente de Guzman, Chief of the Special Action Unit, to solicit its promised contribution to Reyes program to feed hungry children, Guzman told him that the police already knew that he was a fake priest. Reyes burst into tears, but now wanted to be a martyr. He admitted collecting a lot of money posing as a priest, but said the money he illegally acquired never ended in his pocket. He committed estafa to help the poor. We suppose once in jail, he will try to convince the guards that he is their warden.

At the same time, two police officers are facing criminal and administrative charges because they allegedly tried to help Jason Aguilar Ivler escape from the country. Ivler was out on bail. Ivler was being charged for the death accident of Undersecretary Nestor Ponce last August. The two policemen allegedly attempted to help Ivler get out of the country through the Zamboanga City Port.

So we have criminals posing as priests right in our police stations and policemen who actually use their positions to help people who are charged with a crime to escape from the country. The Spaniards have a saying: "submit to one wrong and another follows."

We began this column with a quotation from ancient Rome. We end it with another Latin quotation, "You are guilty of a crime when you do not punish crime." Our laws should be enforced. We hope justice is done to the two cases we mentioned.