Department of (in)Justice

by Lito Banayo
from MALAYA

Just before she left office after the Supreme Court reversed itself and declared that appointive officials running for public office must resign, this lady called Agnes Devanadera ordered the filing of criminal charges against another lady, Judge Theresa de la Torre-Yadao for rendering an “unjust” decision against former Mindoro Occidental Governor Jose Villarosa.

In so doing, Devanadera, who is running for Congress to represent the people of the first district of Quezon, reversed the earlier findings of State Prosecutor Juan Pedro Navera, who dismissed the complaint of Villarosa that the judge “knowingly rendered an unjust judgment” in convicting him as the mastermind of the murder of the Quintos brothers almost 13 years ago. Prosecutor Navera ruled that Yadao did not violate Article 204 of the Revised Penal Code on the ground that Yadao decided on “good faith”.

Yadao’s judgment rendering Villarosa guilty of murder was reversed by the Court of Appeals, a decision that the Quintos family ascribes to pressure exerted by no less than Malacanang. Jose Villarosa’s wife, Girlie, the congresswoman of the benighted feudal province of Mindoro Occidental, happens to be the veritable “yaya” of Dona Gloria, accompanying her in most every foreign trip, fawning and gushing over her Dona every time she finds any reason to. For extreme loyalty, never mind if everybody and his mother in the lower house of Congress (excepting the brothers Arroyo of course), snicker behind her back, she was rewarded with inexplicable promotion to Deputy Speaker, and her husband released from the detention that the Yadao decision consigned him to.

Now Jose Villarosa, whom Devanadera’s predecessor and former associate in a law firm, Hernando B. Perez, wanted to exempt from the murder case, and for which Yadao wrote that “even the rule of law must be protected from the rulers”, wanted revenge. Nemo me impune lacesit (no one dares impugn me and gets away with it), Villarosa must have said, and so likely Devanadera, acceding to her Dona’s wishes, does the judge extreme injustice. Jose Villarosa’s political rival, Ricardo “Ding” Quintos has been crying for justice since December of 1997, and has appealed the CA’s reversal to the Supreme Court where it remains to this day. Guess how the SC will decide.

Yadao of course is also the lady judge who ruled in favour of Senator Panfilo M. Lacson and his fellow accused in the celebrated Kuratong Baleleng case, after the Supreme Court, reversing its own amended Rules of Court, re-opened the case, likely again at the behest of Dona Gloria y su esposo. Lacson is the Arroyo couple’s permanent hate object, he having been the perennial expository of scandalous corruption in their regime. Hell hath no fury than a woman, y su esposo, scorned. Lintik lang ang walang ganti.

And so, the same Department of Injustice, with the lady Agnes as its head, acted on the clearly perjured tale of hearsay spun by one Cezar Mancao y Ochoco, once Lacson’s aide in the defunct PAOCTF, admitted by the same Mancao before media and in court, as having been elicited from him by Dona Gloria’s intelligence chief in the military, Romeo Prestoza. The Devanadera-presided cabal of injustice found probable cause to indict Lacson on the basis of Mancao’s testimony, un-corroborated and in fact contradicted by another extradited witness, Col. Glenn Dumlao. And the Department of Injustice was sustained by one Judge Myra Garcia Fernandez of the Manila RTC, who issued a warrant for the arrest of the fighting senator. Lacson escaped from the web of clear persecution, and meanwhile, in true gangland fashion, where transactions have to be done “kaliwaan”, Judge Fernandez, hora misma, gets recommended almost unanimously by the Judicial and Bar Council (with the singular dissent coming from Senator Francis Escudero), and forthwith appointed to the Court of Appeals, in the wee hours before the constitutional clock forbade Dona Gloria from appointing anyone. Talaga nga naman. Everything is done with stealth and precision timing (como ZTE-NBN), “like a thief in the night”.

Now it is Judge Theresa Yadao’s turn to feel the vengeful wrath of these denizens of evil who lurk in Malacanang, surrounding this woman who was never elected by the people to her post, but has, with devilish cunning, survived all challenges to her legitimacy, and intends to inflict herself further beyond her political grave, upon the fate of these benighted islands.

First Yadao defied the wishes of Malacanang, conveyed both by its former justice secretary Hernando Perez, and even its former executive secretary Alberto Romulo, to go slow on the husband Dona Gloria’s favourite yaya Girlie, and forthwith proclaimed Jose Villarosa guilty of double murder.

Then Yadao proclaimed that double jeopardy had set in on the Kuratong Baleleng case that had hounded Ping Lacson and his co-accused, a decision that once more the DOJ elevated to the Supreme Court where it awaits final judgment.

How dare this woman defy Malacanang twice over? So now, in the last days of her toadying to the wishes of her patroness y su esposo, Agnes Devanadera, who the JBC rendered several times as unfit to join the high tribunal, cavils yet once more to the vindictive desires of her masters, and serves the head of Yadao on a silver platter, just before she inflicts herself upon the lower house of Congress, in the in-distinguished company of the same mistress who has awarded her always despite arrant unworthiness.

Would that the people of Quezon’s first district (from Pagbilao in the western seaboard to Tayabas, Lukban and her native Sampaloc in the midlands, down to Mauban, Real, General Nakar and Infanta in the eastern seaboard and those typhoon-swept specks of Polilio, Patnanungan and Burdeos, not to mention lovely Jomalig) know better than to be represented by this lady of injustice.

But in a larger sense, is she to blame for destroying the DOJ into a bastion of injustice, when her predecessors under Dona Gloria all contributed to its lack of any credibility? Fawning toadies they all have been, willing to bend the law and spit on the rule of law, either for financial considerations, but always and ever in the service of the illegitimate Dona Gloria who uses them and abuses us all in her amoral practice of power.

* * *

Oh, and by the way, when Erap was yet president, and Manny Villar was yet his speaker of the lower house, (the man who would be president now on the basis of his untold billions) this writer, then presidential political adviser, was asked by Speaker Villar in a meeting at the EDSA Plaza in Mandaluyong, to kindly look on how his favourite Girlie Villarosa could be helped in her fight against the proclaimed Ricardo Quintos, father of the slain brothers. Malacanang of course did not bother, with Erap himself fully convinced that Ding Quintos after all was the victim of extreme injustice. But things turned out badly for the Quintos family after Erap fell from power and Girlie quickly buttered up to Dona Gloria. While she and her husband are ostensibly Pa-La-Ka loyalists, everybody and his mother in Mindoro Occidental knows that the Villarosas will go for Money Villarroyo.

(banayo_at@yahoo.com)
(atbanayo.blogspot.com)