Thursday, May 08, 2008 Espinoza: Outrageous case against John-john By Elias L. Espinoza Free Zone
VICE Mayor Mike Rama now has a reason to tell the world he will be Cebu City’s next mayor. That is, if Mayor Tomas Osmeña won’t change his mind at the last minute.
“Only fools don’t change their minds,” goes the saying. Mayor Tomas is certainly not a fool. So, the possibility that he would make a turnaround is not remote. The next election is still about 60 months away.
Although the mayor’s announcement did not come as a surprise to many or to Vice Mayor Rama, some people have a sneaking suspicion things are still tentative.
Mayor Tomas said the Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) will field Rama for mayor with former councilor Joy Augustus Young as his running mate. He also belied talks his wife Margot or son Miguel would run in his place come 2010.
In the event Osmeña changes his mind, Rama will already have a valid reason to still run for mayor no matter who his opponent will be.
Meanwhile, last-term city councilors must be grumbling over the choice of Young as bet for vice mayor. But all they can do is protest silently because they don’t have a voice in the party. BOPK is Mayor Tomas.
Whatever Rama may have done to get that endorsement, Osmeña also deserves praise for his candidness and his assurance that his wife and son won’t join politics.
“So what? When I became mayor of this city, it was to serve the city, and not for the city to serve me…It is the city that holds me, not the other way around.” A superb statement. I hope other politicians will follow its message.
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Ecarta dictionary defines coddle as, “to treat somebody in an excessively protective and indulgent way.” For allegedly “coddling” the owners of the smuggled pseudo-ephedrine, a shabu precursor, former vice governor John Gregory Osmeña is facing charges for violation of Sec. 3 (ee) of Republic Act (RA) 9165. Bail is set at P200,000.
The comprehensive law on dangerous drugs, however, has a different definition of “coddle.” Sec. 3 (ee) uses the term protector/coddle.
Sec. 3 (ee) provides: “Any person who knowingly and willfully consents to the unlawful acts provided for in this Act and uses his/her influence, power or position in shielding, harboring, screening or facilitating the escape of any person he/she knows, or has reasonable grounds to believe on or suspects, has violated the provisions of this Act in order to prevent the arrest, prosecution and conviction of the violator.”
The basis of the charge against Osmeña was the testimony of a Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) agent that the former vice governor asked him to release the seized cargo. Granting for the sake of argument that Osmeña made that request, did it violate Sec. 3 (ee) of RA 9165? From the above definition, the answer is certainly no.
It is perhaps for this reason that the Osmeña camp cried foul over the filing of the charges. The law is silent on Osmeña’s alleged wrongdoing and yet the Department of Justice still charged him. Isn’t that outrageous?
What is punished by Sec. 3 (ee) is the act of shielding, harboring, screening, or facilitating the escape of a person whom one knows to have violated RA 9165. A legal maxim says: “What is not included is deemed excluded.”
There are circumstances that underlie the pseudo-ephedrine shipment worth billions of pesos in March 2004 that PDEA should have dug into deeply. After the seizure of the shipment by customs people and the police, coffee shop talks were rife about persons involved in it other than those currently named and charged.
