Hurry, bargain sale ongoing at Sandigan! - POSTSCRIPT By Federico D. Pascual Jr. | The Philippine Star >> News >> Opinion
Read the link above.
Excerpts:
:TRANSACTIONAL: High crime does pay in the Philippines, and pays handsomely, doesn’t it?
The release by the Sandiganbayan of former military comptroller Carlos Garcia for the price of P60,000 ($1,500) despite very strong evidence of plunder, a non-bailable crime, means to many shocked onlookers that justice in the Philippines is for sale.
The judges and the lawyers aptly called the legal sleight-of-hands “plea bargain.” This sales gambit is a grander-scale version of the same haggling (“tawaran”) ongoing on the sidewalks of Divisoria.
With that scandalously lopsided bargain, the Sandiganbayan and the prosecution service have institutionalized “TRANSANCTIONAL JUSTICE,” an oxymoron but a long-recognized reality in our courts.
But I would hesitate to go along with a proposal to rename the Sandiganbayan to “Sandiganbayad” despite claims that we have the best judges that money can buy.
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UNMASK CONSPIRATORS: Will Garcia now fly to the US, a refuge of thieves and scoundrels, to enjoy with his Stateside family the wealth he had amassed as armed forces comptroller through whose hands passed billions in military transactions?
It is impossible for a solitary general to commit plunder running into hundreds of millions, possibly even billions, without the connivance of superiors and associates.
With the dropping of the plunder charges, who will unmask these co-conspirators who must have pulled strings and paid good money to spring the point man before he squeals on the whole caboodle?
With the utter failure of the justice system, do we now call in the NPA (Nice People Around) to carry out swift alternative justice?
Where I come from, when a farmer’s carabao is stolen, he runs to the NPA. The carabao is recovered and the cattle rustler processed into carabeef. No more plea bargaining, no such thing as a P60,000 bail and all that bull dung.
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LAWFUL BUT AWFUL: Government prosecutors and the justices (a misnomer?) of the Sandiganbayad, I mean Sandiganbayan, will go into that escapist routine of pointing to one another and citing the law (the law of supply and demand?).
But, my gad, what is lawful is not always right. It is sometimes awful. And what the courts dispense is not always justice but only a poor facsimile thereof.
As for the Supreme Court, whatever it does may just be dismissed for being the action of lapdogs appointed by the immediate past president. Alas, that is how deep the incumbent president has ruined respect and fomented contempt for the High Court.
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