Four legal luminaries confirmed what has been obvious all along – that the Aquino administration practices “selective justice” in dealing with corruption. It took Vice President Jojo Binay five years to state what many people, including this writer, have been saying from the very first year of this hypocritical administration that has been boasting of leading the nation in its “tuwid na daan.”
When Binay resigned from the Cabinet last Wednesday, he complained that the justice department practiced selective justice when it filed plunder cases only against opposition leaders even if whistle-blowers gave a list of lawmakers misusing their development funds that included senators and congressmen who are Aquino’s allies, foremost of them Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala.
The four legal experts — Integrated Bar of the Philippines national president Vicente Joyas, San Beda College law graduate school dean Ranhilio Aquino, University of the Philippines law professor Harry Roque Jr. and lawyer Levito Baligod — agreed with Binay that the Aquino administration is applying the full force of the law in prosecuting those in the opposition but being very lenient in going after its allies.
They echoed Binay’s position that the Justice Department under Secretary Leila de Lima is employing a double standard in its investigation and prosecution of anomalies, particularly in the case of the pork barrel scam.
“This administration is timid to prosecute decadent allies, and brave to use the entire government apparatus to ram its political opponents,” Baligod said. “It is selective justice; it is immoral, and its grant is corruption in itself.”
“We are all aware there are many people involved and yet only three senators were charged,” Joyas said.
Fr. Aquino said the double standard has been very glaring. “The ‘selection’ is clear. Why were some hurriedly prosecuted and why does it take so long to conclude investigations against the President’s allies? Has any high profile ally like (Budget Secretary Florencio) Abad been prosecuted?” the law dean asked.
“She’s (De Lima) playing blind and deaf to the fact that no one in the administration has been indicted despite COA (Commission on Audit) reports against administration allies on PDAF,” Roque said, adding that nobody among the President’s allies has been prosecuted despite the Supreme Court ruling against the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Fund (DAP).
De Lima was contradicting an earlier statement when she said more affidavits and evidence were needed to file the charges. On June 13 last year, she said the evidence was complete. That’s a year ago and still no charges have been filed against the lawmakers that included Aquino’s allies. And yet, the investigation against opposition Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Ramon Revilla Jr. and Jinggoy Estrada was so swift.
Aquino and De Lima were obviously targeting leaders of the opposition that challenged him in 2010 and planned to oppose the Liberal Party in the 2016 presidential elections. Revilla made the mistake of announcing his candidacy early for the presidency while Estrada was touted as Binay’s running mate. Enrile is one of the opposition’s top leaders.
These three senators most probably deserved to be charged in the pork barrel scam. Based on reports, they seemed to be the biggest beneficiaries of this shameless scam. But why exclude the 16 other former and present senators and 120 former and present congressmen when Luy and the other whistleblowers presented the same set of evidence against them?
It is obvious that the criteria used by the Aquino administration in dispensing justice is based on political and partisan lines. For example, aside from Abad and Alcala, Transportation Secretary Emilio Abaya, Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman, and TESDA director General Joel Villanueva have all been linked to various cases of corruption and yet, instead of investigating and filing charges against them, Aquino continues to defend them.
I have been a long-time critic of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but while I believe that she deserved to be accused of plunder and election fraud, I also believe that she deserves a speedy trial. It has been five years since she was incarcerated, and I don’t think the trial has even started. If she is indeed guilty, present the evidence and let the court decide whether to let her rot in jail or set her free.
There may also be truth to the accusations against Binay, but why not just file the charges, present the evidence, and make sure the wheels of justice move fast and not follow the slow pace of the plunder case against Arroyo and the multiple murder cases against the Ampatuans, which to this day have also not been resolved.
Aquino’s double standard of justice has been evident from Day One when he persecuted Chief Justice Renato Corona, who presided over the Supreme Court that ruled that Hacienda Luisita — which is owned by the family of President Aquino — should be distributed to the farmers. While he continues to maintain that Abad and Alcala should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, Aquino repeatedly declared Corona guilty as hell in public forums long before the House of Representatives could indict Corona and the Senate could convict the Chief Justice.
Instead of sending a strong signal to government officials and bureaucrats that any wrongdoing would be punished to the full extent of the law, he is saying that if you’re not on my side, you deserve jail; if you are, it’s “business as usual.”
This double standard of justice has raised serious doubts about the sincerity of the Aquino administration’s “tuwid na daan” and yet Aquino maintains that he needs to make sure that his successor would continue his reform agenda.
What reforms? What straight path? Frankly, I don’t see any reform to continue, or a straight path to thread.
(valabelgas@aol.com)