Mystery

More than a couple of days have passed since an explosion kicked out a wall at the high-end Two Serendra condominium building, killing three in the street below. There has been no official statement on what caused the blast.

By the account of the authorities supervising the investigation, three separate canine teams inspected the blast site. The trained dogs found no hint of explosives — or at least no hint of the usual explosive materials they were trained to detect.

An endless train of experts have examined the damaged condominium unit to determine what might have caused the explosion and measure the strength of the blast. As this is being written, a report has yet to be issued.

Meanwhile, residents of the building damaged by the blast have been relocated to a nearby hotel at the expense of the developer. The engineering plans for the building were submitted to guide investigators.

The President ordered all the relevant government agencies to help in the investigation. He made it clear he want a report that will withstand all scrutiny.

There is a subtext to this demand for thoroughness in the work of the investigators. A few years ago, a deadly explosion happened at the Glorietta mall in nearby Makati, owned by the same company that runs the Serendra complex.

A lot of theories were floated while that previous incident was being investigated. Foreign experts needed to be flown in to assess that explosion and reinforce the conclusions. To this day, the official version of what actually happened is still being contested. We are, after all, a culture vulnerable to every sort of conspiracy theorizing.

Indeed, it will help us all if the conclusions on this latest explosion are sound and solid. It is always unhealthy to let doubts linger.

Early on, the authorities appealed against unfounded speculation on what really happened. People have generally heeded that appeal. It helped that the Palace spokespersons were quiet for the weekend and therefore unavailable for their habitual speculation.

It is not usual for buildings to blow out their walls for no reason at all. If no traces of the usual explosive ingredients have been found at Serendra, we can only hope the investigating team will give us a truly plausible explanation for a blast that rattled windows blocks away.

Disproportional

For failure to act on behalf of one party in a spat between neighbors, the Ombudsman recommended a 6-month suspension on Marikina Mayor Del de Guzman.

That seems a grossly disproportional penalty on a municipal executive caught in a vise between one side that brought its complaint to the anti-graft body and the other side that sought a restraining order from a regular court on whatever city hall might do. The disproportionality might be comprehensible considering the fact that one of the complainants in the case brought to the anti-graft body is an officer of the Office of the Ombudsman.

Being comprehensible, however, does not make things just. The Ombudsman’s ruling smacks of unequal treatment before the law, if not abuse of authority by that agency’s employee who is also a complainant — itself an offense. The accuser is, in a sense, also the judge.

A number of residents (including the abovementioned officer of the Ombudsman) of Panorama Street in Marikina filed the complaint against de Guzman for failing to remove a guardhouse, a steel gate and a lane hump installed along adjacent Sunrise Street. They claim their access was impeded and that the structures should not be allowed on city thoroughfares.

The structures were built by the North Rim View Residents Association as a response to a rise in robberies, particularly those involving characters riding in tandem on motorcycles. They argue that the structures were necessary for the security of their neighborhood. They were ready to go to court to defend the measures implemented to curb the rise in criminality.

The city government was caught in bind here. Although there are indeed existing ordinances prohibiting construction that might impede traffic flow, there is likewise a standing policy to allow homeowners associations to undertake temporary measures to improve neighborhood security.

At any rate, the mayor left the matter to his city administrator to resolve. That was, of course, overtaken by the uncharacteristically prompt ruling from the Ombudsman.

Fortunately, the Ombudsman cannot implement its ruling directly. It is for the DILG to act on the recommendation. The ruling has been appealed before the DILG.

Too, existing jurisprudence holds that reelection absolves an elected official of administrative accountabilities incurred in the preceding term. In last month’s elections, de Guzman was reelected by a resounding 96.6% of all voters who cast votes for mayor of the city.

Also, no local official may be suspended during the election period. That period ends June 17. After that, it will be up to the DILG to decide if there is anything served by suspending the mayor on a trifling matter between June 18 and the commencement of his new term on the first of July.

Nevertheless, the view in Marikina is that the gross severity of the penalty assessed by the Ombudsman for a matter that might be worthy only of an admonition must be the handiwork of a certain lawyer who is a Graft Investigation and Prosecution Officer at the anti-graft agency. Should not the Ombudsman have an internal policy requiring its employees to take a leave if they are parties to a case submitted for the agency’s action?

Some bounds have been overstepped in this case, and in others like it where persons associated with the Ombudsman have a personal (or political) stake.