How to release and recapture 1,714 convicts?
THE
attempted release of convicted rapist and murderer Antonio Sanchez has opened a can of worms in the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor).
The release of 1,714 convicts happened under Duterte and with the direct participation of his appointees as BuCor director-general, Nicanor Faeldon and Bato dela Rosa who was later elected senator.
The President’s defenders, who exceedingly and often quite baselessly cheer his anti-crime record, are eerily quiet. But how can anyone cheer a president whose regime released 496 heinous crime convicts per year in three years, despite the law’s clear provision that no heinous crime convicts would be released under the Good Conduct Time Allowance rules?
This is yet another “achievement” of President Duterte, perhaps parallel to his close friendship with the Marcoses and former President Arroyo. What an alliance!
The Senate hearings continue and more scandals are being exposed from the sale of hospitalization permits and the existence of prostitution rings in the nation’s prisons. That this happened in BuCor under former military officials should speak well about their competence, their principal, and their belief that militarizing the bureaucracy would supposedly be the strongest bet against corruption.
Duterte has called on the released heinous crime convicts to voluntarily surrender, while at the same time continuing to hug the disgraced Faeldon. The Chiong sisters’ parents are rightfully miffed, and so are the parents of Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez, and other families of victims of heinous crimes who had fought hard to prosecute the perpetrators. A few dozen heinous crime convicts have marched back to their former jails, but mostly from the ranks of the poor who don’t have lawyers and wealth with which to defend themselves and buy some more time.
Is there any chance that Duterte would ask that Faeldon be investigated and prosecuted over the corruption he presided over at Customs and BuCor? Apparently no chance, perhaps until after Duterte leaves office.
Why does Duterte continue to coddle Faeldon? If Duterte had to ask for his resignation, surely he had legitimate reasons to have him replaced? Or is it merely because like when he just became too hot a potato, and the President would just buy time for the former military man to cool off and reappoint him to another post?
Bato, who has called for the jailing of student activists, has lots to explain for releasing heinous crime convicts. We look forward to other senators asking him questions about his tenure as BuCor director-general, and also to his answers. By releasing hundreds of heinous crime convicts, Bato had exposed students and youth to heinous crimes.
I’m thankful for the activism of the Chiong, Sarmenta, and Gomez families, their supporters, and their communities. Their just demand for the heinous crime convicts to serve their sentences has put a monkey wrench on ghastly sense of alliance-building by the Duterte regime. The very same segments of the population which backed Duterte for his anti-crime promises now stand behind the Chiongs, Sarmentas, and Gomezes.
The President’s diehard defenders have nothing with which to defend the release of the heinous crime convicts. They can try to blame Leila de Lima or even Mar Roxas. But the president has detained De Lima and defeated Roxas.
De Lima and Roxas were not the ones who opened the prison doors for the murderers and rapists. The keys have the fingerprints of Bato and Faeldon, and there are also the referral letters of Salvador Panelo. If they now find the GCTA Law that awful or bad, they surely didn’t feel so when they were signing the release orders. Neither did the GCTA Law tell them to list Janet Napoles as a rapist.
Among the released heinous crime convicts were 15 foreigners. How would Duterte, Bato, and Faeldon make sure they go back to the country and to the nation’s prisons?
Bato has tried to divert the issue towards the reimposition of the death penalty. He says there would be no GCTA to compute and thus no corruption that could happen if the convicts would be quickly executed. Touche. I would happily wait for Raoul Manuel to reappear in the Senate to ask him how we could trust a state and a criminal justice system which releases heinous crime convicts under false pretenses. If the death penalty would be reimposed, the wealthiest and most well-connected detainees, prisoners, and convicts would surely find their “champions” ready to accept bribes to escape prosecution or conviction.
This isn’t a simple can of worms. The BuCor scandal is a veritable quicksand. It has swallowed Faeldon. Bato is trying to fidget away from his accountability. Their underlings and cohorts are being swallowed whole. But most importantly, the regime’s claims of being tough on crime are going down.