Hole of Justice
by Peter G. Jimenea
The Basis of Blasphemy
O
ne of the government offices
with poor performance today is the Office of the Ombudsman. Except for the
honest ones, I cannot imagine how this office had been affected by irresoluteness
of its former officials.
The killings of eleven
Hong Kong tourists at the Quirino Grandstand and of a police officer few years
ago is said to have been blamed by relatives of the latter to the gross neglect
of Emilio Gonzales, the Deputy Ombudsman for Military and Other Law Enforcement
Office (MOLEO), who immediately resigned after the incident.
The Supreme Court (SC)
cleared the police officer due to technicalities as it was the fault of a traffic
deputy. When the SC ordered the Ombudsman to reinstate the poor policeman, the
order has fallen asleep at his Office until the policeman run amuck in
desperation.
Rumor mills are grinding
overnight that the reinstatement failed because the poor cop cannot meet that requirement,
one we have yet to know. Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales should also know
that when Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez stepped down, she left us no guarantee
that all crooks will go with her.
Look at the failed Iloilo
City Housing Project for City Hall employees at Pavia, Iloilo. The case was
filed in 2004 and resolved by a set of Graft Investigators in 2005. But it only
slept there at the office of Ombudsman Gutierrez for over five years.
In 2010, Overall Deputy
Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro sent a decision to Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas
Pelagio Apostol indicting former Mayor Mansueto Malabor and others in his
administration. Yet, he is still groping in the dark for a probable cause
against Mayor Jerry Trenas (now congressman) and his wards.
This is what got us so
badly disillusioned. A first year law student can easily say that the unauthorized
payment in millions of pesos by then Mayor Trenas to the contractor Alex
Trinidad is already embraced in RA 3019, the Anti Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
But the Ombudsman has a
unique power. It may or may not conduct an investigation of any administrative
act or omission complained of. In Office
of the Ombudsman v. De Sahagun, the Court held that the period stated in
Section 20 (5) of R.A. No. 6770 is not a prescription but a discretion of the
Ombudsman whether to investigate a particular offense or not.
Further, the word
"may" in the provision is construed as the permissive and operating
to confer discretion. And the law says, “where the words of a statute are
clear, plain and free from ambiguity, they must be given their literal meaning
and applied without attempted interpretation.”
Finally, however, the
taxpayers’ dilemma nearly ended in the brink of insanity with the November 11,
2012 decision of the Ombudsman. After review by Dir. Virginia Palanca Santiago
and recommended for approval by Deputy Apostol to Ombudsman Morales, the latter
signed the vague decision.
It reads: “The information accusing Jerry P. Trenas,
Melchor Tan, Edwin Bravo, Catherine Tingson and Alex Trinidad for Violation of
Section 3, Par (e) of RA 3019 as amended, for causing the release of the
P43,807,733.73 for construction works of the ICHP in Pavia, Iloilo, despite
reports that substandard materials were used in the project and defects,
deficiencies and lapses in the works were NOTED, is hereby SET ASIDE.”-
The term SET ASIDE with
nothing follows is what got us so badly disillusioned. Why not DISMISS the case
if it is baseless? Well, the dangling of such decision for many years has given
us the reasons to say that this injustice to the taxpayers’ money is now a
scroll that forms the basis of their blasphemy!
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