This is what happens when the Ombudsman tries to make everybody happy instead of just calling it as she sees it: She pleases nobody and makes herself look like a fool, besides.
Let’s start with former President Noynoy Aquino, who, as many have surmised, was given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist by Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales last week. But why is Aquino still protesting his impending arraignment if it is true that the charges filed against him by Morales are—as President Rodrigo Duterte himself described them—“doomed to fail”?
At this point, unfortunately, nobody except Morales, Aquino and his lawyers really know. Aquino’s former spokesman Abigal Valte yesterday confirmed that Aquino filed a motion for reconsideration with the office of Morales, but Valte would not reveal what is contained in Aquino’s motion.
All that’s known, from previous reports quoting Aquino himself earlier this week, is that the former president expressed “surprise” at being indicted for graft and usurpation of authority charges by Morales. Aquino said he was unaware that he had been sued originally on those grounds and confirmed from his lawyers that he had not, in fact, been facing them in the original charge sheet, which was for reckless imprudence resulting to multiple homicide.
On the other hand, the people who filed the original charges, including the relatives of the slain 44 members of the PNP Special Action Force, also submitted a separate motion for Morales to reconsider her indictment of Aquino yesterday. But the lawyer of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, Ferdinand Topacio, has given the best explanation I can find for the reason why neither party is happy with Morales’ indictment of Aquino and his two co-accused in the Mamasapano Massacre.
“Ombudsman Morales wants to have the best of both worlds,” Topacio explained. “She wants to show that she is not biased and at the same time make it easy for Mr. Aquino to evade these charges [that she filed].”
Aquino was apparently expecting that the charges filed by the VACC and the SAF 44’s relatives would be dismissed outright. The complainants, on the other hand, wanted the Ombudsman to indict him of the 44 counts of reckless imprudence (one for every SAF member) and to find him guilty of the maximum penalty of four years for every charge.
But Morales tried to be cute by filing the graft and usurpation charges, thereby succeeding only in making everyone—especially the families of the slain commandos—angry at her. Now Morales has to face the prospect of prosecuting cases before the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court that nobody wants, in order to secure a verdict that will give justice to no one.
Morales can only blame herself for the situation she’s in. After all, as the motion filed by the complainants noted, she “disregarded jurisprudence to the effect that a finding of probable cause needs only to rest on evidence showing that more likely than not a crime has been committed and was committed by the suspects.”
In other words, Morales should have stuck to the complaints at hand, dismissing or indicting on the basis of them. Instead, she decided to get creative.
Now even her fitness to prosecute the cases is being called into question. “We are praying that if Ombudsman Morales will not inhibit herself, she should allow the filing of the homicide charges,” said Dante Jimenez, chairman of VACC, which is helping the slain commandos’ families prosecute Aquino. From his man-cave on Times Street, the thoroughly disappointed Noynoy can only sigh in agreement.
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Of course, there are also those who argue that Aquino is merely going through the motions of protesting Morales’ decision to charge him. After all, the penalties that the former president could be facing for the “weaker” charges that the Ombudsman wants Aquino indicted for are a lot less than the jail time he could be facing, if he is convicted on the homicide complaints.
Because Aquino’s lawyers are playing coy about releasing his motion for reconsideration, it’s possible that they do not want to expose the equally weak arguments they have presented in protest of Morales’ decision. Of course, it is only a matter of time before a copy of Aquino’s motion is secured from the Ombudsman; and then we will all know why Valte doesn’t want anyone to see it right away.
However, some legal experts are already speculating that the fix is in, so to speak, to explain why Aquino and his lawyers don’t want to make the motion public. According to this theory, Aquino’s camp doesn’t want people taking apart his weak arguments for Morales to consider her ruling before she can come up with a plausible reason for denying the motion (and the VACC motion, besides) so she can proceed with indicting and prosecuting the former president on the equally weak charges she filed.
If this “God Save the Queen” strategy is truly in play, then the families left behind by the dead SAF members—and everyone who wants Aquino to pay for sending the commandos on a virtual suicide mission by not saving them with reinforcements when they were set upon from all sides—should really be worried.
