What do you do when you go the department store? Pay. What do you get in return? Goods.
The case of the now famous Alabang boys did not make the Department of Justice a store of justice, but only spelled in bold letters what we already knew even before: It is a store. We may hasten to add, it is not the more decent stores in the malls; it is more like a public market where people haggle, cajole, if not coerce, for the lowest price.
And Justice Secretary Gonzales is the chief vendor.
Already circulating before was the buzz that under Gonzales’ helm, the department has been populated with fixcals, err fixers, sidekicks of the chief who sleuths around the department sniffing, just like hungry hounds, for cases involving the rich and famous, from whom to extract blood money. When these men sniff blood, they send feelers to the litigants and offer to help (read: fix). The bid is whisphered to the chief, and the transaction is perfected with a wink of an eye.
The department has been involved in bribery scandals before. But the Alabang boys case tops the list in terms of the attention it generated largely due to the rigmarole between the pillars of justice system – the law enforcement in PDEA, and the prosecution arm.
The Alabang boys who were arrested in entrapment operations by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had been charged with drug-pushing, Theirs is not an ordinary case. These boys reside in the exclusive enclave for the rich and famous known as Alabang, which is a few kilometers away from the heartland of Metro Manila.
This is a case that could trigger the fixers at the department store of Gonzales salivate involuntary, and fixing they did.
The PDEA formally charged the Alabang boys - Richard Brodett, Jorge Joseph and Joseph Tecson – with drug-pushing, a crime carrying the supreme penalty of reclusion perpetua under Republic Act No. 9165.
Prosecutor John Resado dismissed the charge against the Alabang boys citing technicalities mandated by Republic Act No. 9165 such as the absence of proper inventory of the goods seized from the suspects, the manner of warrant less arrests when shots were unnecessarily fired, and the buy-bust operation by only one poseur buyer is untenable.
The resolution alone could easily stand legal scrutiny. To Prosecutor Resado’s credit, he knows his law, compared to the lousy police work by the PDEA in not complying with the mandates of the new drug law. What authority does PDEA have to directly shoot at the suspect who was speeding away, aiming directly to his body?. The PDEA agents should have aimed at the tires to force the vehicle to stop than shoot directly at the suspect. It was a miracle the suspect dodged the bullets.
Unfortunately, for Prosecutor Resado, his resolution dismissing the case was clouded with suspicions, and evidences tending to prove bribery come aplenty. There was this prepared draft of the resolution bearing the seal of the Department of Justice, a draft prepared by Atty. Verano who is lawyering for the Alabang boys. There was Justice Undersecretary Ricardo Blancaflor interceding personally for the Alabang boys despite that the case does not fall directly under his office. Of course, you have PDEA and DOJ officials throwing murk at each other.
The badges of bribery are all written in bold letters in the wall. The paper trail is showing in the Banco De Oro account of Prosecutor Resado when he deposited P800,000.00 on the day the case was dismissed. To cap it all, Prosecutor Resado refused to waive the right to secrecy of his bank account for reasons that he wanted to keep his privacy. What privacy he was talking about? The press is lynching him. Public opinion has convicted him. The least he could do to save his skin is reveal the bank account so his name would be cleared, that is, if his bank account will not reveal his culpability in the first place.
A lawyer-friend who is based in Manila, and who has to deal with the shenanigans of the DOJ and PDEA, said: “Pare, manok-manok lang yan. Hindi land nagkasundo nang sharing.” ”Manok manok”? I quipped. Accordingly, one manok( a tagalog word for chicken) represents the letter M in one million. One “manok” means the official is asking one million. In the DENR, “sandwich” means bribe money. Still, in another agency, the understood idiom is “pizza”. Corruption not only hides in the three-piece suit; it speaks in double entendre too.
In the committee hearing of Congress, Prosecutor Resado charged that PDEA lawyer Lazaro attempted to bribe him, telling the him to drop the case in exchange for bribe money. Knowing that PDEA in the past has been engaged in “hulidap” – arresting a person and extorting money in exchange of not filing the case – the charged against Atty. Lazaro cannot be stranger than fiction.
But the investigation must now stop. The National Bureau of Investigation has cleared the DOJ officials with any wrongdoing. The NBI which is under the DOJ chief has virtually cleared the latter.
How can a moro-moro be better staged than this? A subordinate affirming the boss’ innocence. Secretary Gonzales could have well signed his clearance certificate and acquit himself.
What we have is a smudged image justice, if a tainted one is justice at all. Perhaps, we are just raising the bars of justice too high. You do not expect anything fair in the Department Store of Justice. You better go to the malls. You may get a fair deal.
