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I first met Justice Undersecretary Ricardo Blancafloor at a foreign
policy seminar sponsored by former Labor Undersecretary Susan
“Toots” Ople, president of the Ople Policy Center founded by her
father, the late statesman Blas F. Ople, at the Marbella building on
Roxas Boulevard, Manila, sometime in 2006.
If my memory serves me right, Blancaflor was
then an undersecretary of the Department of Defense under then
Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita. He was one of the speakers at the
symposium on the subject of international terrorism.
He struck me as a fine and courteous gentleman
who would fight for his conviction of what is right and proper. He
was intelligent, reserved, modest and idealistic.
Last January 4, I was surprised to read in the
Inquirer’s banner story naming him as the Department of Justice
official who had tried to intercede in the release of the “Alabang
Boys”—Richard Brodett, Joseph Tecson and Jorge Joseph, all
scions of rich families—who were arrested by agents of the
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in September for drug
possession.
The story tended to show that Blancaflor had
shown special interest in the case when he called Maj. Ferdinand
Marcelino, chief of the agency’s Special Enforcement Service, to
ask why the three young drug suspects were still in PDEA’s custody
despite a December 2 resolution of the chief state prosecutor,
Jovito Zuno, ordering their release.
The basis for the release order was the
supposedly illegal search and arrest of the drug suspects by PDEA
agents.
Blancaflor found himself cast in a bad light
when Maj. Marcelino gave a nuanced impression of his call, saying he
thought it was a “form of pressure” for the release of the
suspects.
The case further hurt Blan-caflor with rumors
that P50 million had changed hands as a bribe allegedly offered by
the families of the drug suspects for their release. The public mind
began to wonder whether Blancaflor, in inquiring why the “Alabang
Boys” were still detained by the drug agency, was linked to a drug
syndicate.
That was the reason Blancaflor was reasonably
outraged by the whole brouhaha and expressed resolve to clear his
name.
I have followed up the case with keen interest.
Reviewing the sequence of events since Blancaflor’s call to Maj.
Marcelino, I came to the conclusion that the justice official had
been grievously maligned and misjudged.
Blancaflor said Philip Bro-dett, an uncle of one
of the suspects, had called him to ask why the three suspects were
still in PDEA’s custody when a release order had been issued by
Zuno three weeks earlier. As a responsible ranking official in the
justice department, he made the call to Maj. Marcelino as an act of
public assistance.
What is wrong with that? When a PDEA official
replied that an appeal against the release order was being made,
Blancaflor said he “left it at that,” adding: “I already
forgot about it until the aforementioned article [the Inquirer
headline story] appeared.”
In other words, as far as I could understand it,
Blancaflor was motivated by his desire that justice run its course.
There was a release order from an appropriate authority and he
wondered why it was not being implemented. He was not obviously
aware that such an order had yet to be reviewed by Justice Secretary
Raul Gonzalez.
The report that a draft release order for
Secretary Gonzalez’s signature had originated from Blancaflor’s
office and delivered by one of his secretaries, Janet Payoyo, to the
office of the justice chief, has been clearly explained by
Blancaflor in his news conference and by subsequent events.
Blancaflor said he had not seen the letter at
all, that it had been brought to his office when he was in Iloilo
and that it was brought by his secretary to Gonzalez’s office in
accordance with his announced office policy. He could not have
prepared such a document in which Secretary Gonzalez’s family name
ended in an “s.”
It turned out that the release order, written on
a Department of Justice letterhead, had been prepared by the lawyer
of the drug suspects, Felisberto Verano, sent to the office of
Blancaflor with the request it be delivered to Gonzalez’s office.
Blancaflor’s secretary precisely did that, following simple office
procedure if Blancaflor was not around.
PDEA Director General Dionisio Santiago made no
judgment on Blancaflor’s behavior. Gonzalez reserved comment on
the undersecretary’s accountability for making the call to PDEA.
He conceded that an undersecretary could make any inquiry on the
case as Blancaflor had done.
Blancaflor has shown himself to be a highly
principled official. He once belonged to the civilian component of
the military rebel group Rebolusyonaryong Alyan-sang Makabansa (RAM)
headed by then Col. (now Senator) Gregorio Honasan.
He would not mind going underground for his
idealism and moral conviction.
agr0324@yahoo.com
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