The incident last week involving the arrest of Ted Failon’s house help, driver and close relatives brought so much disgust and dismay among those who’ve seen the manner the arrest was carried out. It was brazen, callous, barbaric, draconian, sadistic display of arrogance. There was obviously a clear abuse of authority on the part of the arresting officers. While their intentions may be noble however their actions reflect otherwise - it was a direct assault on people’s rights. It was simply unacceptable. If they were able to do it in front of the cameras how much more off cam?
I was appalled by their complete disregard of these people’s most basic right - to be respected as a human being atleast. The arrest in the hospital was very inhumane and excessive. I was aghast. The relatives of the deceased were never respected. A relative was dragged like a 14th century criminal. All these things happened even before the filing of a formal complaint. Even a criminal doesn’t deserve to be treated the way the relatives and the household members of the victim were treated. And what’s more painful is that they were deprived of the last chance to be by the victim’s bedside especially in the times that their presence was needed the most. That was the last chance that they can be with Trina alive. I was enraged.
In the course of making one of the arrests (I believe it was in the house), one inquired as to the reason, the dark corrupt looking cop responded, “Obstruction of Justice”. How convenient. And just to show to the world that they’re indispensable, the arrest was done without warrant, and the reading of Miranda rights? I guess that’s not even necessary for these people. They just didn’t do it, not that I expected them to but they could have at least pretended to care even just for the cameras. I don’t care how many “takes” it would take, they should have just done it. Read their rights for God’s sake. This will bring me back to my greatest fear, how much more off cam? I can just imagine the situations in the provinces (where people are yet to see how cameras look like) how cops implement the arrest, the kicking, the pulling, the pushing, the hitting, the punching and God knows what else they’ve been doing - Poor Juan dela Cruz.
What is obstruction of justice anyway? By definition, it denotes an interference with the orderly administration of law, impeding or obstructing those who seek justice in court or those who have duties or power of administering justice therein.[1] In the Philippines, this was made flesh by the late Dictator F. Marcos when he signed into law, Presidential Decree 1829 “Penalizing Obstruction of Apprehension and Prosecution of Criminal Offenders”. What acts does it penalize?
“It criminalizes the act of any person who knowingly or willfully obstructs, impedes, frustrates or delays the apprehension of suspects and the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases by committing any of the following acts:
(a) preventing witnesses from testifying in any criminal proceeding or from reporting the commission of any offense or the identity of any offender/s by means of bribery, misrepresentation, deceit, intimidation, force or threats;
(b) altering, destroying, suppressing or concealing any paper, record, document, or object, with intent to impair its verity, authenticity, legibility, availability, or admissibility as evidence in any investigation of or official proceedings in, criminal cases, or to be used in the investigation of, or official proceedings in, criminal cases;
(c) harboring or concealing, or facilitating the escape of, any person he knows, or has reasonable ground to believe or suspect, has committed any offense under existing penal laws in order to prevent his arrest, prosecution and conviction;
(d) publicly using a fictitious name for the purpose of concealing a crime, evading prosecution or the execution of a judgment, or concealing his true name and other personal circumstances for the same purpose or purposes;
(e) delaying the prosecution of criminal cases by obstructing the service of process or court orders or disturbing proceedings in the fiscal’s offices, in Tanodbayan, or in the courts;.chan robles virtual law library
(f) making, presenting or using any record, document, paper or object with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to affect the course or outcome of the investigation of, or official proceedings in, criminal cases; .chan robles virtual law library
(g) soliciting, accepting, or agreeing to accept any benefit in consideration of abstaining from, discounting, or impeding the prosecution of a criminal offender;
(h) threatening directly or indirectly another with the infliction of any wrong upon his person, honor or property or that of any immediate member or members of his family in order to prevent such person from appearing in the investigation of, or official proceedings in, criminal cases, or imposing a condition, whether lawful or unlawful, in order to prevent a person from appearing in the investigation of or in official proceedings in, criminal cases;
(i) giving of false or fabricated information to mislead or prevent the law enforcement agencies from apprehending the offender or from protecting the life or property of the victim; or fabricating information from the data gathered in confidence by investigating authorities for purposes of background information and not for publication and publishing or disseminating the same to mislead the investigator or the court.”
My guess, the provision that they claimed to have been violated, would be par. b of sec 1 of the said decree. My take is, how could there be any obstruction of justice when there is no crime in the first place? Isn’t it that a crime must have been committed first before a simple act of cleaning the mess be converted to “altering, destroying, suppressing or concealing evidence” rendering it useless in court proceedings? But there was no crime. It was suicide. What surprised me is the fact that the QCPD people were too eager to incarcerate the news anchor and poor helpers they bore the brunt of the police officers who, I later heard, have some ax to grind after Failon exposed them in DZMM regarding the shootouts in EDSA. Can they not just accept the fact that they may have committed a mistake there and that Failon was just doing his job as a commentator? The last time I remember, this country is still a democratic one. What happened? Did it just change when I was asleep?
What’s happening now is a clear indication of the malady. It strikes to the very core of justice and equality. While we need the cops to implement the laws zealously, however we don’t mean that they can just tromp on people’s rights and overdo things. There has to be balance. We have to see the worth of every penny that we paid for our taxes. I certainly cannot stomach the fact that the very people who derived their pay from our taxes and who are supposed “to serve and protect us” are the very same people who will mock our rights and treat us as criminals even before proven guilty by any court of law. Disgusting!
[1] AmJur 2d Obstructing Justice § 2 (citing People v. Ormsby, 310 Mich 291, 17 NW2d 187; People v. Somma, 123 Mich App 658, 333 NW2d 117, Shackelford v. Commonwealth, 185 Ky 51, 214 SW 788).
For the analysis of Presidential Decree 1829, check this out > http://www.angelfire.com/ks/cybertarget/SPL_paper.htm#_ftn6
Friday, April 24, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Manong Ed and the Filipino Electorate
(This is directly taken from my reply to Prof Agnes of FEU, Institute of Arts and Sciences)
Hello Sir Agnes. Long time no hear? Hehehehehe
I just finished reading the doc you sent. It seems to me that you like this area a lot - electoral process. This is one of the interesting areas in the field of political science esp. in Philippines setting. It’s very dynamic and it’s one of the most talked about topics. It’s also something that oftentimes disheartens those who really value election.
In the case of Manong Ed, no offense, I think he’s too ambitious. He committed the gravest error of equating Pampanga to the rest of the country. His dramatic win in his locale is an isolated case. Replication is out of the picture. He is even now facing heavy opposition in his own province. Running a “national campaign” is certainly not a walk in the park. It takes more than “moral regeneration” (for want of a better term), as his primary platform, to win the presidency. It takes more than naiveté. It takes more than provincial know-how to be in Malacañang. It takes more than what he has to be the next Commander in Chief of the AFP. He just simply doesn’t have what it takes to be the next president for now and my guess even in the future, not that I belittle him or his ability although I really do. While there is no denying that we need a leader who possesses moral strength or someone who exemplifies moral uprightness or someone who embodies Filipino values, he is just too self-righteous for me and I find it dangerous. His presence can further blur the very thin line that separates the Church and the State.
Speaking of the Filipino electorate, I honestly find it hard to describe who and what we really are in terms of what we prefer in a candidate. A lot of factors come into play. Apart from personal character-traits, there are more that seem to matter to a lot of us: name recall, performance (if candidate has previously held public office), popularity, political machinery, grassroots support, support of the religious and the pretending to be religious groups, support of Juday (pun intended), money, which is oftentimes derived from crimes that seemed to proliferate only when election is nearing such as kidnapping, bank robbery and so on and so forth, and believe it or not others vote depending on who is ahead in the latest survey, the list is never ending. We are simply insatiable.
With all things considered, I really think the multi-party system is to blame not the electorate. Why? Because relying on the latter to become what we envisioned them to become is wishful thinking. We are simply unique though predictable. And we shouldn’t even think that education is the remedy. It certainly is not the solution because we really cannot control how we want them to think or at least be like us in the way we think because this simply presupposes intellectual arrogance and therefore must be obscured along with the crude practices that we had and continue to have. A Harvard graduate still prefers Estrada, come what may, and a Georgetown alumnus may continue to find the petite Gloria better than the rest. This is a perfect juxtaposition of how we Filipino think even with education – voting wise. Despite the weirdness, I still find wisdom in the overall choice of the Filipino people for after all that’s the real beauty of democracy – choosing the person you think can deliver. There’s nothing much that w can do when we speak of the “Filipino electorate”
I will dedicate another chapter to explain why I believe multi party system is to blame but for now I have to limit my explanation since my eyes are now super tired and my fingers have become numb. I have been typing the whole day. (-:
It’s always a pleasure sharing ideas with you, Sir.
Hello Sir Agnes. Long time no hear? Hehehehehe
I just finished reading the doc you sent. It seems to me that you like this area a lot - electoral process. This is one of the interesting areas in the field of political science esp. in Philippines setting. It’s very dynamic and it’s one of the most talked about topics. It’s also something that oftentimes disheartens those who really value election.
In the case of Manong Ed, no offense, I think he’s too ambitious. He committed the gravest error of equating Pampanga to the rest of the country. His dramatic win in his locale is an isolated case. Replication is out of the picture. He is even now facing heavy opposition in his own province. Running a “national campaign” is certainly not a walk in the park. It takes more than “moral regeneration” (for want of a better term), as his primary platform, to win the presidency. It takes more than naiveté. It takes more than provincial know-how to be in Malacañang. It takes more than what he has to be the next Commander in Chief of the AFP. He just simply doesn’t have what it takes to be the next president for now and my guess even in the future, not that I belittle him or his ability although I really do. While there is no denying that we need a leader who possesses moral strength or someone who exemplifies moral uprightness or someone who embodies Filipino values, he is just too self-righteous for me and I find it dangerous. His presence can further blur the very thin line that separates the Church and the State.
Speaking of the Filipino electorate, I honestly find it hard to describe who and what we really are in terms of what we prefer in a candidate. A lot of factors come into play. Apart from personal character-traits, there are more that seem to matter to a lot of us: name recall, performance (if candidate has previously held public office), popularity, political machinery, grassroots support, support of the religious and the pretending to be religious groups, support of Juday (pun intended), money, which is oftentimes derived from crimes that seemed to proliferate only when election is nearing such as kidnapping, bank robbery and so on and so forth, and believe it or not others vote depending on who is ahead in the latest survey, the list is never ending. We are simply insatiable.
With all things considered, I really think the multi-party system is to blame not the electorate. Why? Because relying on the latter to become what we envisioned them to become is wishful thinking. We are simply unique though predictable. And we shouldn’t even think that education is the remedy. It certainly is not the solution because we really cannot control how we want them to think or at least be like us in the way we think because this simply presupposes intellectual arrogance and therefore must be obscured along with the crude practices that we had and continue to have. A Harvard graduate still prefers Estrada, come what may, and a Georgetown alumnus may continue to find the petite Gloria better than the rest. This is a perfect juxtaposition of how we Filipino think even with education – voting wise. Despite the weirdness, I still find wisdom in the overall choice of the Filipino people for after all that’s the real beauty of democracy – choosing the person you think can deliver. There’s nothing much that w can do when we speak of the “Filipino electorate”
I will dedicate another chapter to explain why I believe multi party system is to blame but for now I have to limit my explanation since my eyes are now super tired and my fingers have become numb. I have been typing the whole day. (-:
It’s always a pleasure sharing ideas with you, Sir.
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