November 15, 2006 · Posted in: In the News
DOJ probe on rebellion case ‘substantially flawed’
LOUD boos filled the air after Special State Prosecutor Deana Perez denied the motion of the lawyers of 49 individuals charged with rebellion to dismiss the preliminary investigation on the grounds that there was no valid complaint-affidavit. The 49 were alleged to have taken part in the coup attempt last February 24.
Among the hecklers at Monday’s raucous proceedings at the Department of Justice were several men and women wearing a sablay. They were University of the Philippines faculty members who had come to observe the probe.
Former UP president Francisco Nemenzo was one of the 49 respondents. Among his co-accused are retired and active military officers, including former Marines chief Maj. Gen. Renato Miranda, former Army Scout Ranger commander Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and Marine Col. Ariel Querubin. Civilian respondents include former senator Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, former ambassador Roy Señeres, activist Renato Constantino Jr. and his wife Maui, and members of civil society.
“Ang sarap mag-participate! (It will be fun to participate!)” whispered a gleeful observer. And participate they did.
“Sige papa! Pagalitan mo! (Come on papa! Get angry!)” someone muttered as Noli Panganiban, the attorney for Supt. Benjie Magalong, thundered that no complaint had been submitted to the DOJ investigating panel.
“We’re behind you,” another added.
Defense lawyers said that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) merely submitted a letter of referral to the DOJ panel, instead of a complaint-affidavit.
Prosecutor Deana Perez, the head of the investigating panel, replied that the counsels should treat the sworn statement of AFP Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, as the complaint-affidavit. However, Esperon’s affidavit did not mention 47 of the 49 accused.
“It is not true that the affidavit of Esperon is a complaint, because it does not name the respondents as so and so,” countered one lawyer. “We want to see the complaint first. afterwards, we believe that all these proceedings before this committee is null and void, without any complaint.” (A farce!, cried one member of the audience.)
At this, clapping broke out.
After denying the motion, Perez added that the future dates for the preliminary investigation — the 20th and the 27th — would stand.
Cries of “stand for what?” could be heard.
During the proceedings, Perez said that the record was not clear due to the noise.
“If the hearing was a bit rowdy, we only have DOJ to blame. If they’d done it in accordance with Rule 112 of the revised rules of criminal procedure, hindi ito mangyayari (this would not have happened),” said Marvic Leonen, Nemenzo’s lawyer.
Counsels of the respondents added that they would question the DOJ’s decision to continue the probe before the Court of Appeals. They scored the proceedings as “substantially flawed.”
“Any respondent in any criminal investigation must substantially know the charges against them. If you get a complaint that is so haphazardly done…where there is no clear complaint-affidavit alleging clearly the nature of the liability of each of the respondents, then it’s very difficult for the respondents, given due process, to be able to intelligently defend themselves,” said Leonen.
Nemenzo denied participating in the coup attempt, and said in a statement that the investigation conducted by the NBI and the CIDG was a “sloppy job.” In the subpoena, he was listed as “Prudencio ‘Dodong’ Nemenzo.”
“Everyone in UP knows my real name. A call to Diliman or a visit to UP Manila would have spared them from this embarrassing error.”
He added that he could have taken advantage of the flaw to declare that he was not among the accused, but he chose to attend the probe. “I do not want to get off the hook through technicality. I welcome this charge — no matter how silly and malicious — as an opportunity to reiterate the views that the Arroyo government seeks to suppress.” (Read the full statement here.)
UP Faculty Regent Roland Simbulan said in a statement that the charges against Nemenzo “were reminiscent of the 1950s when U.P. faculty members who were known to have progressive and nationalist views were witchunted by the Congressional Committee on ‘Un-Filipino activities’ and accused of being Communists and conspirators.”
After the hearing, some of the co-accused milled around the room, approached each other and introduced themselves. Many of them said that it was the first time they had met.The case against them is filed under the title NBI and CIDG vs. MGen. Renato Miranda, et al. IS No. 2006-1003.
This prompted Miranda to quip, “I won friends and I met the et al.”
1 Response to DOJ probe on rebellion case ‘substantially flawed’
jose miguel
December 11th, 2006 at 5:55 am
To my limited perspective, coups are shallow solutions to problems. It may even be actions behind selfish motives in the Philippine situation.
Just one of our problems is our resources which are rich, are rapidly being drained out of the Filipinos especially the poor. They are being drained out to the Americans who aborted violently the birth of our nation in the 1900s. Because of that violent abortion attempt of the Americans (refer to sources such as, San Juan Jr. of bulatlat, John Gates in Philippine Pacification, In Our Image by Stanley Clark, writings on Philippine-American War by Luzviminda Francisco, and many more) by their invasion of our country, 250,000 to 900,000 Filipinos died. As a result, our birth as a nation from mother Spain became a pathological birth. We could not anymore resist their forced injection of an HIViruslike virus in our national vein. This is the institutionalization of perpetuation of American colonization virus. Like an HIVirus, it has replicated its genetic code to our national genetic code. That is why thru our: constitution; political system; economic and defense system, it is always the Americans who are the recipient of our resources and not the Filipinos. We Filipinos attempted in the early 1900s to wrest control of our resources from the Chinese but the American government intervened thus perpetuated weakening of our resistance against foreign control. That is why until now several attempts by Filipinos among us to develop our own airplane never got off the ground in favor of 2nd hand flying coffins looking like helicopters of the Americans. That is why our economy, then media and now our mentality are being controled alternately by the Americans and the Chinese. That is why our government then up to now under the puppet and dubious government of Garci Macapidal Arrovo continue to allow U.S. intervention in our defense affairs (supporting U.S. Iraq War efforts which the rest of the world rejected as dubious; U.S. troops surveying our terrain which are our tactical resources and conducting psychosocial operations to win the hearts of the Mindanao people over to the U.S. troops and not to Filipino troops; etc.).
That is why while our country is not able to feed millions of us Filipinos and hundreds of thousands are leaving the country to use their skill for foreigners in order to eat, hundreds of thousands of Chinese invade our country to be yet another channel to drain our depleting resources inaccessible to most of us Filipinos. That is why when these foreigners overrun and possess Filipino Citizenship documents and became rich out of our resources, we Filipinos serve them aboard our country.
How then should we Filipinos react to this situation? Which is more fundamental, the present constitution or how it developed thru the years in the context of the psychosocial development of the Filipinos in the context of how the Americans succeeded in developing colonial perpetuation?
What then do Filipino Soldiers among us do? Fight brother Filipinos who are resisting the infection by the U.S. Institutionalization of Perpetuation of American Colonization Virus (IPACVirus) in the name of defending the constitution? Or should Filipino Soldiers among us defend our country against foreign invasion, incursion, infection or anything that would undermine our sovereignty just like soldiers of France, Israel or Vietnam whose birth were not pathological and thus normal?
Maybe to answer these questions, we need to review world history. Maybe we need to develop a workable blueprint for organic based (on the natural and universal order of things) psychosocial historical development project.