Justice for the poor

It is often said that there are two types of justice in the Philippines: one for the rich, and another for the poor.

This is starkly illustrated in the case of Dion Angelo “Gelo” dela Rosa. The 20-year-old third year college student and altar boy from Caloocan City died of leptospirosis last month after wading for several days in filthy floodwaters up to three feet deep.

He endured the floods in a desperate search for his father Jayson, who had gone missing on July 22. Metro Manila was hit by extreme rainfall and flooding at the time, and Jayson could have had an accident. Caloocan also had one of the highest cases of people killed in Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal crackdown on illegal drugs.

The drug-related killings are dramatically down under the new administration. But police were also responsible for Jayson’s disappearance from his household. And for reasons that make you wonder if there is justice in this country.

The story is that Jayson was originally apprehended for theft in a convenience store. The store did not press charges, so Jayson should have been freed. Instead the Caloocan police decided to book Jayson for illegal gambling, ostensibly for playing kara y krus.

The coin-toss betting game is typically played by the extremely poor, involving amounts that constitute not even a drop but only a molecule in the bucket of those who engage in e-sabong, but who are beyond the reach of the law.

*      *      *

Jayson was tossed in jail, and could not afford to post bail.

Clearly, he was not accorded the right to one phone call. No cop bothered to inform his family that he had landed in jail.

Jayson, however, has a wife and six children who worried about him. At the height of the monsoons and floods, Gelo and his mother Jennylyn, who is blind in one eye, searched for Jayson in several police stations before finding him three days later, on July 25, handcuffed at the Caloocan Police Substation 2 jail.

By then Gelo had started feeling ill. The leptospirosis symptoms must have been ignored, as typically happens among those with limited means for health care. On the night of July 27, he was found dead by his three-year-old sister.

Health officials have warned that the leptospirosis strain this year is unusually aggressive.

Last Monday, Jayson, accompanied by a lawyer and Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, filed an administrative complaint before the National Police Commission against three cops who apprehended him.

Whether the justice system will work for Jayson is iffy.

Police arrest the hampaslupa and throw them behind bars for playing kara y krus. But elite PNP Special Forces members provide escort services for Chinese involved in Philippine offshore gaming operations.

Cardinal David also lamented that no major gambling lord has ever been indicted for violating the Marcos 1.0-era Presidential Decree 1602, the law for which Jayson was booked. Online gaming is widespread. These days even children can gamble online.

*      *      *

In the pork barrel scam, lawyer Richard Cambe died of a stroke while serving a life term for plunder over the diversion of P224.5 million in Priority Development Assistance Fund allocated to his boss, Bong Revilla. But the senator himself was acquitted, and was even returned to the Senate by voters. We’re such gluttons for punishment.

The Sandiganbayan also issued a weird order using wording that has allowed Revilla to refuse to this day to return P124.5 million to us taxpayers.

Just recently, former Quezon City councilor Dante de Guzman was sentenced to over 100 years in prison for P361,500 paid over a year to ghost employees. Meanwhile, all that V. Bruce Tolentino and Anita Linda Aquino had to do was resign as members of the Monetary Board after being embroiled in a scandal over ghost employees in their offices, and everything has been forgotten. All is well with the world in the MB and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Not even Malacañang, supposedly on an anti-corruption crusade, has dared touch the MB untouchables. The supposedly accountability-conscious Palace is treating the MB ghost employee issue like pigsa – a boil that will simply go away by and by.

Such cases feed the deep cynicism over the ongoing crackdown on flood control anomalies and vows of transparency in the 2026 national budget process, even as people clutch at shreds of hope that the efforts might actually bear fruit.

There have been numerous retch-worthy hypocritical moments, right from the get-go when BBM told crooks to have some shame, “mahiya naman kayo,” and he was greeted with a standing ovation by the 20th Congress.

In the final half of his term, BBM seems to be on legacy mode. After rehabilitating the human rights record of the Marcoses, he is now trying to undo or at least diminish the kleptocracy attached to his surname.

His predecessor’s human rights record made it easy for him to look so much better in this department.

In battling corruption, however, he must brace for a tsunami of resistance from even his allies, following his promise not to spare them if found involved in anomalous deals.

He must also hurdle public cynicism about the sincerity of his campaign.

Among the biggest factors fueling cynicism is seeing justice applied selectively. Not just along political lines, but based on income levels: one for VIP offenders in public office, and another for the likes of Jayson dela Rosa.