Friday, June 20, 2008 Sanchez: A superior justice system By Benedicto Q. Sanchez Nature speaks
HUMAN rights defenders should condemn the murder of labor leader Armando Dolorosa by three bonnet-wearing suspects in Hacienda Mary Ann, Barangay San Pablo, Manapla. Dolorosa heads the local chapter of the Left-leaning National Federation of Sugarcane Workers.
Who killed him is anybody's guess. It could be described as a case of extra-judicial killing. I doubt if the basis for the murder is his ideological leanings. Most likely, it has got to do with the agrarian reform dispute.
But whatever the motive for the crime, there is absolutely no basis for the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army (CPP-NPA) to kill the prime suspect, Hermes Ostan, the overseer of former owner Freda Regalado.
According to initial police investigations, 30 guerillas, including three female fighters, armed with M-16 and M-14 assault rifles, entered the hacienda compound and shot dead Ostan. The modus operandi has all the hallmarks of an NPA rubout operation.
The retaliatory killing didn't redress the injustice to Dolorosa by murdering Ostan. We howl at Dolorosa's murder and we join his family in seeking out justice.
But an extrajudicial killing have not serve justice, it committed another injustice against Ostan and his family. A wrong does not right another wrong.
In the first place, due process demands that Ostan should be deemed innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law.
If the CPP-NPA insists on its people's court, they should have apprised him of his rights under the Miranda doctrine. He should have been made to face his accusers, or given a legal counsel to defend him.
I'm not privy to the case. But I'm willing to bet my last buck: none of these happened. And I'm sure this is what happened.
Ostan was tried in absentia. He wasn't given the right to produce his own witness or his material evidences to debunk the accusation that he orchestrated Dolorosa's murder.
Ostan didn't know the judge, the prosecutor, and the witnesses. He probably didn't even know his defense counsel, assuming that the purported "people's court" had provided him with one. His case has been deliberated in absolute secrecy.
Where then is the due process within their judicial system? That anyone can be judged and found wanting, with the accused not even knowing what crime they are being accused of.
And the CPP-NPA is bragging of its superior "people's court" over that of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.
To be sure, the Philippine judicial system has lots of room for improvement. It in itself is committing injustices against accused persons. It takes local courts an average of six years to decide on a case. Justice delayed, justice denied.
But the civil rights of the accused are respected. They are apprised of charges against them, they can present their witnesses and evidences. The State provides them with legal counsel if they are poor enough to get their own counsels.
No, the Philippine courts, for all its infirmities, are far better, and superior in meting criminal justice.
And what the CPP-NPA has is nothing less than "kangaroo courts," sham legal proceedings, which it has set-up among party organs to give the impression of judicial processes. With them, we can expect more injustices for its victims.
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