ONE OF the singular achievements of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in her first years in office was the smashing of kidnap-for-ransom gangs that had proliferated so much during her predecessor’s term that our country was labeled by foreign media as the “Asia’s kidnap capital.”
“BIGGEST JOKE of the century,” according to a recent banner headline in this newspaper for an article on the Supreme Court’s decision that Marcos’ ally Eduardo Cojuangco’s purchase of 20 percent of San Miguel Corp. shares in 1983 was legal and therefore wasn’t ill-gotten wealth.
The phrase was really an uncalled-for hyperbole made by senior associate justice Conchita Carpio-Morales in her dissenting opinion: “The argument that Cojuangco was not a subordinate or close associate of the Marcoses is the biggest joke to hit the century.”
Justice Carpio-Morales may have thought she was being clever in using that phrase. However, she in effect portrayed her nine Supreme Court colleagues, who voted for Cojuangco’s position, as gullible fools. Quite unfairly, as none of her colleagues in the Court argued that Cojuangco was not Marcos’ close associate. Not even the tycoon in fact, as he publicly had said that he was proud that he was at Marcos’ side to the dictator’s very end. What he had been denying is that his purchase of San Miguel shares violated Philippine laws.
AFTER AN investigation that lasted nine months from May 2008 to February 2009, five Manila policemen were found guilty of grave misconduct for illegally detaining a 30-year-old chef, attempting to extort P200,000 from him, and forcing him to swallow a packet of shabu.
Two different independent bodies recommended that they be fired from the force, their retirement benefits forfeited, and banned for life from ever joining government: the Philippine National Police’s regional headquarters and then the Office of the Deputy Ombudsman for the Military and Other Law Enforcement Offices.
Nothing more has been heard of four of the five rogue cops. Their leader, two years later, would become a mass murderer, killing eight innocent people, four of whom were women. This, of course, was former Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza, who hijacked a tourist bus and went on a killing frenzy in August last year.