IN the labyrinth of Philippine justice, there is a world of difference between a person who looks the law in the eye, and one who treats the departure gate as a gateway to freedom.
As the Sandiganbayan deliberates on the bail petitions of several DPWH Region 4B officials and engineers caught in the whirlwind of the Mindoro flood control anomalies, a clear legal line is being drawn.
It is a line that separates the courage of the innocent from the calculated flight of the fugitive.
Let’s look at the “ordinary” officials from Mindoro.
These are career engineers and regional staff who were suddenly branded as villains because of a “data glitch” — the now-infamous multiyear programming and scheduling system (MYPS) planning spreadsheets that were mistaken for actual project maps.
When the warrants came out, they didn't book a flight to Singapore or other countries, or even hide in a safehouse.
Instead, they voluntarily yielded. They chose the cold floors of a detention cell over the comforts of hiding because, as the old saying goes, “the innocent have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
They surrendered to prove their innocence, to show that the dikes in Naujan aren’t "ghosts" but are made of actual concrete and rebar.
Contrast that with former House representative Zaldy Co. While his co-accused were being hauled off to jail, Co was reportedly nowhere to be found, eventually being declared a fugitive from justice by the Sandiganbayan’s Sixth Division.
The court ruled his failure to surrender, despite knowing the charges, showed a clear intent to evade.
Universidad de Manila law dean Pearlito Campanilla hit the nail on the head: “If the Sandiganbayan grants bail to those who surrendered, that grace will not — and should not — extend to Zaldy Co.”
The logic is grounded in longstanding legal precedence. In the eyes of the court, flight is often an admission of guilt. You cannot seek the “judicial relief” of bail while you are busy hiding from the very court that grants it.
The Supreme Court has been consistent on this by emphasizing that a person seeking judicial relief must first submit to the jurisdiction of the court.
You cannot be a fugitive and a petitioner at the same time. You cannot ignore a warrant from an undisclosed location and then ask for the right to walk free.
Meanwhile, we cannot help but to contrast the cases and situation of these innocent professional engineers with that of political heavyweights like Chiz Escudero and Jinggoy Estrada — who seem to have that uncanny ability to evade the law.
This, especially after a soon to be released Senate Blue Ribbon Committee report was purportedly watered down to give them more room for legal maneuvering, prompting Ombudsman Remulla to give us a cynical reality check describing the development as: “That’s politics.”
It’s a bitter pill. While the “big fish” might negotiate their way out of committee reports through "compromise" and "signatures," the small-fry engineers from the provinces are the ones left to rot in jail.
This is where the Sandiganbayan must step in as the great equalizer.
If political investigations are subject to “negotiation,” then the court must ensure that due process is the only currency that matters in the courtroom.
Filing cases based on flawed MYPS data — treating a planning tool as a crime scene map — is the definition of haste making waste.
It destroys lives. If these Mindoro officials can prove that the projects exist and that they were simply victims of a technical misunderstanding, the court must act with the same speed in granting them bail as the government did in accusing them.
But for those like Zaldy Co, who chose to run? The warrants remain active. The gates of the court remain closed to those who refuse to walk through them.
In the end, justice in this country shouldn't be about who you know in the Senate and other halls of politics; it should be about whether you had the guts to stand your ground when the truth was on your side.
