Washing of hands

Official impunity has dropped to a new low with the recent downgrading to homicide of the murder charges lodged against a group of police officers that killed Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte, and fellow inmate Raul Yap inside their cell at the Baybay Sub-Provincial Jail in Leyte last November. The downgrading was at the instigation of the Department of Justice itself, which threw out the findings of “premeditated murder” reached by its own investigative arm, the National Bureau of Investigation, against the 19 accused, and instead took up the cops’ dubious defense — that Espinosa and Yap died after shooting it out with the raiding party.

This perversion of justice is outrageous enough. What’s even more reprehensible is the taunting nonchalance with which Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II has responded to this development in his own backyard.

The inquiry into the alleged drug connections of the detained Sen. Leila de Lima, in which Aguirre himself questioned and presented to the Senate and public his gallery of drug convicts-turned-witnesses against his predecessor, showed that the justice secretary is, if anything, a hands-on boss. His accusation of conspiracy to foment rebellion against Senators Bam Aquino and Antonio Trillanes in the wake of the Marawi siege not only proved to be spectacularly false; it also showed that it was a story he had made up entirely by himself, with not one undersecretary or underling in his department, or at the NBI, appearing on-cam with independent evidence to back his claim.

In short, this is a man who runs his ship with a firm, personal hand — which makes his defense of his department’s move to downgrade the charges against the 19 cops a laughable cop-out. Aguirre says, with the straightest of faces, that he had nothing to do with the matter. He says it was a subordinate of his, Justice Undersecretary Reynante Orceo, who made the sole decision to overturn the DOJ’s previous indictment of the cops for murder, and arraign them instead for the lighter, bailable offense of homicide. Indeed, the policemen led by Supt. Marvin Marcos were released on bail earlier this month.

“I did not have any hand in the drafting of [the] resolution… I was not the one who resolved the matter. I was not the one who wrote it. I was not the one who signed it,” Aguirre declared, as if mere repetition of denial would absolve him of responsibility in the matter.

The implication is double-barreled, both damning to Aguirre. If he didn’t know what a subordinate of his was doing, what does that say about his plain competence to run his department? His tenure so far has lurched from one controversy to another, brought on largely by his penchant for reckless statements and accusations against administration critics and dissenters. But what he’s claiming now by his virtual washing of hands in this matter is another thing: ignorance, or sheer cluelessness about the goings-on in such a public, sensational case in which the reputation of the entire police force, not to mention the Duterte administration’s commitment to due process and elementary justice, is on the dock.

But if Aguirre did know, and even tacitly approved of, Orceo’s decision (think about it—would a subordinate even contemplate such a major move without the green light from the boss?), then that brings us to frightening territory. What does this make of the findings of the NBI and of the Senate committee that looked into the circumstances—shocking, from any angle—of the killing of Mayor Espinosa and his cell mate? Is it unreasonable for the public to think that the DOJ is taking its cue from an administration that leans toward absolving and not censuring policemen compromised by the war on drugs? Who will now police the police?

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, chair of the committee on public order and dangerous drugs, has called on the Senate to denounce the DOJ for downgrading the charges. His colleagues in the chamber have also expressed disappointment about the downgrade. They shouldn’t take too long to find their collective voice of outrage.