THE arrest of former congressman Zaldy Co in the Czech Republic has added an unexpected European chapter to what is already a sprawling scandal over flood control funds. It is a development that carries both promise and peril. The dispatch of Secretary Fredderick A. Vida, head of the Department of Justice, to Prague, signals urgency. But urgency by itself does not guarantee results.
This is not a police matter. It is a test of institutions — ours and theirs.
We should begin by being clear about roles. Vida is the justice secretary, not the Ombudsman. That distinction matters. The justice department prosecutes cases and handles extradition. The Office of the Ombudsman, headed by Jesus Crispin Remulla, investigates and prosecutes corruption involving public officials. For this case to prosper, these institutions must move in concert, not in parallel silos that too often define our system.
Why Prague? Why the Czech Republic? History offers both a clue and a caution.
Between November and December 1989, Czechoslovakia underwent the peaceful upheaval of the Velvet Revolution, led in spirit by dissident playwright Václav Havel. It was a revolution without bloodshed, a triumph of moral courage over authoritarian decay. This was followed by the Velvet Divorce, agreed upon in 1992 and taking effect on Jan. 1, 1993, peacefully splitting Czechoslovakia into two independent states. The Czech Republic would go on to join NATO and the European Union, firmly embedding itself within the democratic West. On paper, it is a model transition.
But corruption did not vanish with the fall of communism. It adapted. It survived. It learned new tricks.
Havel believed in “living in truth.” His politics was moral, almost philosophical. He sought to cleanse public life by appealing to conscience. It was inspiring and necessary, but unfortunately, not enough. The chaotic privatizations of the post-communist era opened new avenues for graft. Old networks morphed into new oligarchies. Even a revolution built on ideals could not fully insulate a system from abuse.
There is a lesson here for us.
We often believe that exposing corruption is half the battle. That public outrage will do the rest. But the Czech experience tells us otherwise: outrage without enforcement is theater; moral clarity without institutional muscle is aspiration.
This brings us back to Prague and to the harder question: Can we bring Zaldy Co home?
Extradition is not a matter of diplomatic insistence. It is a legal process governed by rules that are both exacting and slow. Czech courts will examine whether the charges meet the principle of dual criminality, whether the alleged acts are crimes under their own laws. They will weigh evidence, not headlines. They will consider human rights standards, including detention conditions and due process in the Philippines.
In other words, they will not take our word for it — precisely how it should be.
The independence of the Czech judiciary is not an obstacle. It is a reminder of what credible institutions look like — a standard. It is also a mirror. Are we prepared to meet it? Do we have airtight cases, or merely strong suspicions? Are our prosecutors ready for scrutiny beyond our borders?
We should also temper expectations. Even under the best circumstances, extradition proceedings can take months, if not years. Appeals are part of the process. Legal maneuvering is inevitable. What looks like a decisive arrest can quickly become a protracted legal battle.
But the larger story is not about one man.
The flood control scandal has captured public attention because it strikes at something fundamental. Infrastructure meant to save lives may have been turned into instruments of greed. In a country battered by typhoons and floods, this is not just corruption. It is betrayal. Yet, we have seen this movie before.
From pork barrel scams to procurement anomalies, the pattern is familiar: expose, outrage, investigate, and, too often, forget. The system absorbs the shock. The public moves on. Accountability slips through the cracks.
This is where the Czech experience offers its most sobering insight. The Velvet Revolution proved that a people can dismantle an unjust order with remarkable speed. But building a just one is a far longer, more difficult endeavor.
For the Philippines, the question is not whether we can retrieve a fugitive lawmaker from Prague. It is whether we can build a system where fugitives have nowhere to run in the first place.
That requires more than dispatching a justice secretary across continents. It demands coordination between the DOJ and the Office of the Ombudsman. It requires evidence that can withstand international scrutiny. It calls for political will that does not fade when cases become inconvenient or implicate powerful interests. Above all, it requires consistency — the certainty that corruption will be punished, not occasionally, but always.
Havel once warned that systems are sustained by the lies people are willing to live with. The lie we continue to tell ourselves is that each scandal is an exception, not a pattern.
In Prague, history whispers a different truth: Revolutions can be swift; justice rarely is. Until we close that gap, every scandal, no matter how shocking, risks becoming just another chapter in a story we already know too well.
As Havel’s contemporary, Czech author Milan Kundera, reminded us, “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” To remember, then, is to resist.
