Time and again this administration seems bent on amusing us. Where on earth can you find an accused negotiating her transport with the police? And the Police and the interior obsequiously waltzed with her. Viola! We have a zarzuela; poor Pnoy’s got a black eye again.
Goodness, has the police ever done anything decisive? Neither can Sec. Robredo be expected to make a difference. Everyone remembers his incertitude or even faintheartedness from the Mendoza hostage crisis to the Sarah Duterte mauling punching incident. Today’s drama was a spectacle almost beyond belief, and sad to say it highlighted, once again, the ineptitude and the misplaced comity that is crippling this department.
Granted, the accused finds all the succor in our constitution and laws. That is for reasons consistent with fundamental presumption of innocence. But nowhere in the litany in the bill of rights and other laws do you find that an accused has the right to negotiate or argue the propriety of the mode or means of her transport. That is overstretching and reading too much into what you don’t find in the laws.
If the chopper flight was never discussed with them before, as complained of, it is because they are never entitled to its discussion. It is police operation. For security reasons, all the more that the police should have the most latitude in discretion, and to hold in secrecy the ultimate means of transport if it so deem proper. Those pilots put and lose their lives doing what they’ve sworn to do. It is insulting of an accused to discount their judgment, as though one’s life is more dispensable that the other.
It is hilarious that the whole nation has to be treated to this incredible fence-sitting, shilly-shallying law enforcement yet again. One may be fuming: “But she’s the former president.” That is the whole point: She WAS the president. Besides the fact that she’s the president NO MORE, she was voted into office of PUBLIC TRUST by the people, and the same people believe she trampled upon that trust by the very nature of the charges against her.
It is fair to say we should not judge her, and I guess no one does. Let the courts determine her fate; let justice take its course. People agree to that. However, we must remember that to their minds, the accusations are far from baseless. The “hello Garci” tape, and her belated aired “I am sorry” address to the controversy are prima facie in the mind of the public of breach of trust.
But again, that is a side issue as far as today’s event is concened. The point is the vacillation and indisposition of the interior department and the police under it. The lawyers and aides of the former president are, in fairness, just competently doing their jobs.
That notwithstanding, I believe the majority is willing to give little concessions to the former president, owing to her alleged health condition, but none should be of sort of any extra amenities. Like any mortals, she has to wake up to her reality: she is being held to account for crimes so grave even the laws may not allow bail.
Unfortunately, if it were one unknown accused, he would have been collared, cuffed, shoved into a police car, whisked to a precinct and hurled into a cell of 50 –for a 20-spacer. All like in a day’s work, and none of this fanfare, and could likely be for a petty crime.
It has for a long time been tempting, if they have not been tempted yet, for people to accept that each of us has his own REALITY depending on one’s stature. It is this double REALITY that has long undermined our brand of democracy.
That REALITY makes the “EQUALITY IN THE EYES OF THE LAW” an even more dubious proposition.
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