High living

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION by a public official is, under the law, a red flag. According to a landmark Supreme Court ruling—written by then Chief Justice Renato Corona, who would subsequently undergo an impeachment trial centering in part on his unreported properties—the presumption of ill-gotten wealth arises when a public official’s properties appear to be in excess of or not commensurate with his or her income. The burden of proof then lies with the defendant to show that he or she acquired wealth through legal means.

By that measure, the manner of living of Rolando Espinosa, mayor of Albuera, Leyte, should have triggered a lifestyle check early on. Albuera is categorized as a third-class municipality, and its mayor receives a monthly salary of between P23,000 and P27,000. But Espinosa is said to own a hotel, a number of mansions, jet skis, even exotic animals. And early this week, he and members of his family were reported to have showed up at Camp Crame in designer duds.

The news came to light when President Duterte publicly tagged Espinosa as a drug coddler. The mayor and his alleged drug-trafficking son were given 24 hours to turn themselves in, or risk death if they resisted arrest. Espinosa complied and admitted that his son, Kerwin Espinosa, who had gone missing, did deal in drugs, but said he himself was clean. Subsequently, it was reported that the police killed six bodyguards of the mayor in an operation to search the family compound in Albuera; six other armed guards were able to escape. A police report said the cops found 13 high-powered firearms, four cal .45 pistols and rifle grenades in the premises.

According to police records, Espinosa has licenses for only three firearms, and two expired last May. Illegal possession of firearms is in itself a major charge, but the pictures that have circulated of his alleged assets, showing lavish means clearly beyond the earning capacity of the mayor of a small town, should prompt government investigators to determine if the properties are indeed his, and, if so, how he managed to acquire them.

Espinosa is said to be the owner of, among others, a 20-room, five-story hotel; at least three sprawling mansions, one with a swimming pool; and a compound that houses a gym, his jet skis and his collection of dozens of snakes. He has also reportedly admitted to having had plastic surgery, like his fugitive son who is tagged “the No. 1 drug lord” in the Visayas.

(What is it with people of great wealth? In his heyday, Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug trafficker who ran a multibillion-dollar worldwide syndicate based in Medellin, built a zoo populated with zebras, hippos, giraffes and other nonindigenous animals imported at great cost to Colombia. And the home of Mexican drug lord “El Chapo,” when raided, yielded not only hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and guns cast in real gold, but also cages of panthers, lions, and other big cats.)

The Duterte administration would make a much-needed corrective to its war against crime and drugs by focusing its firepower less on drug dependents and small-time pushers that mostly come from desperately poor circumstances, and more on local government officials—as well as police and military personnel—who have the means and the guns to protect, perpetuate and profit from the structures that allow illicit activities, from jueteng to drug trafficking, to flourish in their respective areas of responsibility. The President has announced that at least 35 local executives are involved in drugs; bringing down these kingpins and dismantling their networks would provide the genuine shock to the system that the current spate of “salvagings” of petty addicts—and the growing number of bystanders caught in their wake—does not.

The baffling thing at this point is, even as Espinosa has been branded by no less than the President and the Philippine National Police chief as a drug coddler, and even as the mayor has turned himself in and admitted to being the father of a notorious drug trafficker, there is yet no warrant for his arrest, nor is there any pending case against his son. And PNP Director General Ronald dela Rosa has declared that the state has no case against him.

It looks like, except for the apparent ill-gotten wealth, there is much more spadework that the administration has to do to make the drug accusations against Espinosa et al. stick.