It’s complicated

Honesty is no longer a virtue because everybody lies anyway. That is what I have been hearing the last couple of weeks and it frightens me because its logic, actually the lack of it, can set dangerous precedents. What happens to the crime of theft for example? Should it be deleted from our statute books because everybody steals anyway, although in varying frequencies and amounts?

The flawed reasoning is the cause why many of our elected public officials steal money and don’t feel sorry about it even after they have been caught. What is distressing is that we appear to have fallen for or surrendered to it. Where was our sense of indignation when a senator accused of plunder was acquitted and yet ordered to return the plundered public money?

And why have we not added our collective voice to Sen. Ping Lacson’s protest over the revisions made by the House leadership on the annual budget after it was approved by the Senate? The House said they were merely unbundling the budget by identifying the projects for which money had been allocated. The question is why was the unbundling done after it was scrutinized by both houses and not before it?

I read a column in the Inquirer last Sunday about voting Dumbly over voting Wisely. That, Voting Dumbly, is exactly what we will be doing if we do not require honesty, among others, of our candidates. The personal life of drug suspect Jocelyn Encila, as described in the drug matrix released by the police Regional Intelligence Division, is indeed complicated. Her alleged romantic liaisons

Where was our sense of indignation when a senator accused of plunder was acquitted and yet ordered to return the plundered public money?

extend to both sides of law enforcement, the police and the criminal, although here, the lines have been so blurred, it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.

It is perplexing why with the thousands of suspects already killed in connection with President Duterte’s bloody drug war, many people still ply the trade. Why are they not scared? Is the lure of easy money so irresistible, they’re willing to risk their lives? Should the police kill many more to make loud and clear to its target audience the President’s message that all drug suspects will be wiped off the face of the earth or at least our side of it.

On the other hand, Encila’s case shows how much the police can benefit from a suspect who is alive. If Elymar Ancajas had died in an encounter with policemen who found him in possession of 18 kilos of shabu in Inayawan on March 3, it would have been difficult for them to uncover Encila’s role in the alleged drug network operating in the island of Cebu.

But what happens next? An arrested drug lord will be charged in court and let us assume that he will be convicted and will be sent to jail at the Bilibid national penitentiary no less. The imprisonment is supposed to reform him so that when he is released he can be assimilated with society’s mainstream. But is that what is actually happening? You tell me.

I have consistently opposed summary executions because they transgress the rule of law. I remain resolutely opposed to it but each passing day, it is becoming difficult to argue with those who claim that imprisonment is not an option if we have to eliminate the drug trade.