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Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Malilong: Noting wrong with what Mayor Chiong did
By Frank Malilong, Jr.
The Other Side
Mayor Ferdinand Chiong saw a constituent being made to suffer from an injustice and came to her rescue. Now they’re accusing him of abuse. How stupid can we get?
When Brenda Selim was brought to the police, her clothes were damp and her child was nursing a fever. She had just been arrested by her cousins, who conveniently found two packs of shabu that allegedly fell from her pocket in the course of a quarrel with her mother. The police crime laboratory would later declare that the packs did not contain the illegal substance.
Since Chiong’s critics have chosen to be technical and legalistic, let me ask the question: Was Selim’s arrest without a warrant lawful in the first place? She was supposed to have been arrested while engaged in the commission of an offense (possession of shabu). But the police crime laboratory said there was no shabu, so how could there have been a valid warrantless arrest?
If Selim’s arrest was illegal, the police had no basis to detain her or, for that matter, restrain her freedom of movement by placing her in Mayor Chiong’s custody. Selim ought to have been released outright. The filing of charges for direct assault and oral defamation against her is an obvious afterthought.
I have known Enan Chiong and I am not surprised by what he did. He said that he’s ready to face the consequences. I do not think that there are going to be any consequences. Enan’s only mistake, if mistake it was, was in not insisting that Selim be set free immediately. His critics should be reminded, just in case they have forgotten, that it is also the mayor’s duty to see that justice be done.
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Businessmen are among the loudest to complain about corruption in government but are their own hands clean? The results of a survey conducted by the Social Weather Station (SWS) show otherwise. The study, done over October 2002 to February 2003 on public sector corruption, had Filipino managers as respondents. Fifty-seven percent of them said that most, if not all, companies in their sector use bribes to secure public sector contracts while 30 percent agreed that most, if not all, companies, use bribe to obtain contracts in the private sector.
In an April 3 media release on the survey results (a copy of which was furnished me by Bob Gothong), SWS’ Mahar Manga has noted that while the business community “continues to express strong willingness to contribute funds for fighting corruption, ” it has to “set the example by correcting widespread dishonesty in business practices.”
The survey, according to Mangahas, showed “a high prevalence of dishonest business practices.” Only 35 percent of the respondents said that all companies in their sector issue receipts; 18 percent said they keep only one set of accounts, and a dismal 11 percent said they paid their sector taxes correctly. Majority (72 percent) of the respondents said they have been asked for a bribe in connection with taxes or licenses but only 5 percent reported the incident because “nothing would happen anyway.”
Asked to name the agencies they trusted most for sincerity in fighting corruption, the respondents gave the thumbs up (over + 50) to the Supreme Court, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Health and the Department of Budget and Management. Rated Very Bad (below – 50) were the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Department of Public Highways and the Bureau of Customs.
The survey had a sample size of 500 enterprises, 214 of which were drawn from the top 1500 largest corporations and 286 coming from the among the small and medium enterprises. It had a margin of error of 4.4 percent.
(Comments are welcome at fmmjr@ skyinet.net)
(June 4, 2003 issue)
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