By Jesus Sievert
THE public uproar, turned outrage, created by the near release of convicted murderer/rapist, then-Calauan, Laguna, Mayor Antonio Sanchez, can only be construed as divine intervention.
Divine intervention in the sense that it not only opened the public’s eye to the corrupt practices existing inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) under the watch of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), but in learning about the sad fact that the supposed impartiality of Lady Justice in her blindfold with regards to wealth, power and other status does not hold true anymore inside the correctional facility.
The scandalous controversy involving Sanchez’s aborted release, after having been sentenced to seven terms (1 term is equivalent to 40 years ) of reclusion perpetua in 1995 for the rape-slay of University of the Philippines Los Baños student Eileen Sarmenta and the murder of her boyfriend, Allan Gomez in 1993, comes on the heels of a successful, yet fishy, discharge from the NBP of three convicts sentenced to 40 years in prison for the rape and killing of sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong of Cebu City in 1997.
The common denominator for the two heinous cases is the now much talked about Republic Act 10592 better known as the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) law.
For all intents and purposes it is a law that rewards good behavior in detention, but for the presumptuous, incompetent and unscrupulous members of the management organizational hierarchy of BuCor who simply read but not learn by heart the statutory provisions of the law, there is bound to be failure or anomaly in the implementation of the requirements or non-requirements of the law.
Such has been the justifiable reason for the public outcry when BuCor signed the release papers of hundreds of prisoners, including convicted rapists, murderers and drug traffickers, when, in fact, under the GCTA law criminals convicted for heinous crimes are excluded from its benefits along with habitual delinquents, escapees and recidivists, but allows for a reduction of sentences of other persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), depending on how well they abide by rules and regulations inside “any penal institution, rehabilitation, or detention center or any other local jail.”
The GCTA law had the humane purpose to not only help unclog the country’s overcrowded jails, but giving chance to those deemed rehabilitated, including the infirm and the elderly whose sentence does not fall under the category of heinous crimes.
Unfortunately, the BuCor allowed the GCTA law to be bastardized, corrupted and made a lucrative business at the expense of even those not convicted of heinous crime, but trying to get rehabilitated, productive and living exemplary lives inside the NBP so that, through the GCTA law, they could earn good-conduct credits for them to be freed sooner than their full term sentence requires.
The truth of the matter is that the real culprit could only be the BuCor hierarchy for their blatant display of ignorance of the GCTA law in its entirety.