We could be on the threshold of an epidemic of violence in our schools.
The gun attack that happened at the Ateneo de Zamboanga high school happened just weeks from a similar attack on a public school in Tacloban. In between those two tragic events, police have recorded several stabbing incidents in schools across the country.
None of the attacks were linked to any serious conspiracy or ideological trend. Investigators are still trying to dig deeper to uncover anything systemic in these sequence of events.
We used to think that school shootings are insane occurrences that happened elsewhere. We were wrong. It is happening right here, endangering our children. Threatening to transform our schools into combat zones with heavily secured perimeters, lessons on how to survive an active shooter and close inspections approximating airport security checks. The psychological toll on our young could be high.
Reacting to the Zamboanga shooting, law enforcers are now suggesting legislation to increase the penalties on careless gun owners. One of the guns used in this shooting incident was actually government issued, belonging to the father of the shooter who worked for the Customs police.
There are calls for returning illegal possession of firearms to a non-bailable offense. As in other instances of tragic criminality, the reflex response of is to increase penalties as deterrence. This almost never works.
Some legislators turned to their usual suspects: violent video games. The problem with blaming video games is that the only possible solution is comprehensive censorship of what our adolescents are allowed access to. Censorship has problems of enforceability.
The link between video games – such as the link between erotica and sexual assaults or alcohol and brawls – is hard to establish. The level of controls enforced on adult content and on alcohol consumption have not been proven to dissuade crimes.
The Palace spokesperson, who thinks her job is to editorialize on the issues of the day, blames schoolteachers for what appears to be a spike in school violence. The implication is that the school shootings boil down to failure in teaching good manners and right conduct. Her comment drew the brutal backlash it deserves.
The usual targets of blame are too handy. We need to put our best social psychologists to work examining this apparent spate of youthful violence. We might uncover a profound malaise underlying the tragedies.
There are enough studies done about other societies that suggest a brutalized people often turn to inflicting inexplicable violence on themselves. We are a brutalized people. The solution might lie not in applying more controls but in enacting more relief.
Delayed
Justice delayed is justice denied. If this is true, then we must have a surfeit of injustice.
In 2017, Enrique Manas Sr. was killed in an ambush in Samar. For nearly a decade, the murder was intensively investigated and the culprit definitively identified. But the victim’s family still waits for the wheels of justice to begin turning.
Last year, then justice secretary Jesus Remulla issued Justice Circular No. 20 raising the evidentiary standard for prosecutors to observe before filing cases. The Supreme Court upheld this circular.
On Jan. 16, 2025, then justice secretary (now Ombudsman) Remulla directed the filing of charges against one Emilio Zosa and his co-accused. The directive presumably observes the evidentiary standards Remulla set for prosecutors. The criminal information against the accused was received by the Regional Trial Court on March 19, 2026 – more than a year after the justice secretary directed the filing of the case.
It took nine years of exhaustive investigation and careful review for the case to finally reach the judicial process where evidence could be presented and tested. But the process has been frozen once more. The accused Emilio Zosa filed a Motion for Reconsideration, asking the DOJ to revisit the process that resulted in the filing of the case.
The information was filed in court when Frederick Vida, Remulla’s successor, was already justice secretary. He apparently recognized the validity of his predecessor’s directive. The DOJ seemed ready then to pursue the case against Zosa et al.
It is every person’s right to file a Motion for Reconsideration. But such a filing must be supported by some justifiable reason such as new evidence introduced or a material change in the record. The basis for Zosa’s filing is not clear. The aggrieved family of the victim is given no convincing explanation for the renewed delay in the progress of this case.
Since the evidence supporting the filing of the case presumably met the higher standards set by Remulla’s circular to prosecutors, the evidence should be strong enough to merit trial. The least the DOJ can do at this stage is to update the Manas family on the basis for giving the Motion for Reconsideration due course. Such an update will enable the lawyers for the family an opportunity to submit their own position.
The family – and the public – deserve to know why the process is stalled once more. For close to a decade, the family has been waiting for a trial to be held. Now, in addition, they are urging the DOJ to exercise more transparency in the conduct of this case.
If it is at all possible, the DOJ might try and expedite proceedings on the Motion for Reconsideration filed. We know justice takes time. But this is taking ridiculously long.