When a poor public servant steals a few hundred pesos in public funds and is convicted, he is hauled into to a filthy, cramped, steel-barred jail where every inch of it is hell. He could be bullied by hard-core inmates asserting turf leadership; or sodomized by a sex-starved cellmate; or stripped of his belongings. He could, of course, resist—at his own risk. Added to this is hurdling the red-tape within, where, for instance, he has to beg and plea for a mere painkiller, let alone a doctor. Meals are scanty and austere, and are oftentimes more fit for pigs than for humans. The toilet is hell by itself, with its water coming in trickles, or none at all. Rodents and vermin come and go. This is our conventional jail—a place where sorrow begets pain; where humanity turns into nothingness; and where compassion, mercy and tenderness have no place.
In contrast, we have Gloria Arroyo, a potential, anticipated plunder convict who allegedly stole millions of people’s money, yet she now resides in a cozy government hospital suite where she can stay forever as long as she can pretend to be sick—with a retinue of specialists at her beck and call. Joseph Estrada, a plunder convict, was allowed by the State to serve his jail term in his stately Tanay rest house, where he lived like a king until he was pardoned by a perceived kleptocrat. The alleged pork barrel scam architect who should be in a gas chamber is given a special holding house in Laguna, a thousand times better than 70 percent of our populace’s houses. She is pampered with abundant care and attention by a team of surgeons. Not funny. High-profile plunderers linked to the biggest pork barrel scandal in Philippine history will demand the same brand of kindness and softness from the State when their time comes. Wait and see.
And yet the Bill of Rights in the Constitution talks vehemently about “equal protection of the law”—a hallowed mandate commanding the State to treat its citizens in equal terms under equal circumstances. Simply said, a citizen “must get no less and no more” than what other citizens get under relatively even circumstances.
But here is the irony: Regardless of their social status, shouldn’t plunderers, including those in “custodia legis” be cooped in rat- and roach-infested jails as well? Instead, they are kept in special slices of “paradise” in “hell”—a bizarre place, courtesy of the government.
—MANUEL BIASON,
mannybiason@verizon.net