Nobody ought to dispute that the right to travel is a fundamental liberty. Yet this constitutional right was never designed to become an escape route for people who suddenly find themselves under investigation.
I admire how sitting legislators Estrada and Marcoleta opted to face arrest and eventual imprisonment despite having opportunities to run and hide. When the names of powerful people begin appearing in investigations and government investigators start asking uncomfortable questions, some individuals suddenly discover urgent reasons to leave the country: medical treatment, business or family matters, even political persecution.
Former PNP Chief Panfilo Lacson evaded arrest years ago, as did former PNP Chief and sitting Senator Ronaldo ‘Bato’ dela Rosa a few months ago. A few days ago, sitting legislators Loren Legarda and Leandro Leviste followed suit, reportedly anticipating their arrest for a non-bailable crime.
So when powerful people leave precisely when accountability begins knocking at the door, the public has every right to ask: Is this really an exercise of a constitutional right or is it an exercise in escaping responsibility?
Departure from the country, by itself, does not establish criminal liability. After all, we have due process and the constitutional presumption of innocence. But the people also have something that no statute can take away-common sense. And common sense tells us that when people being investigated suddenly become unavailable to investigators, something is seriously wrong with the system.
By law, government agencies generally have to wait for a court order before they can prevent a person from leaving the country. The more disturbing question, therefore, is not simply why people leave. It is why government appears to allow them to leave so easily. Last year, when President Marcos Jr. himself exposed supposedly anomalous, questionable, or even ghost projects involving enormous amounts of public money, there was a glimmer of hope that corrupt public officials would finally be held accountable. Senate hearings and NBI investigations followed. Names of several powerful people, mostly congressmen, surfaced.
Yet some could still evade arrest by simply leaving the country unless a court order can be timely issued to stop them, as in the case of former Speaker Martin Romualdez. I doubt whether there are non-judicial restrictions on the right to travel of other individuals whose names were mentioned or who were implicated in the flood-control anomaly hearings but had neither been charged nor arrested. If reports are accurate, government agencies somehow took precious time before placing certain personalities under closer watch. And, even freeze their assets in the process as a precautionary measure.
I am bewildered. What exactly were officials waiting for, a confession or a boarding pass? Unfortunately, this is where our bureaucracy becomes almost utterly comical, if not absurd. Corrupt people can flee the country with money that belongs to the Filipino people. Government proudly announces that it is ‘doing something’ and that an investigation is ongoing, almost as if it were giving suspects ample time to exercise their constitutional right to travel. Immigration officers tighten the borders only after some of these powerful individuals have already crossed them.
Doing something very late is sometimes indistinguishable from doing nothing. For decades, our justice system has developed a reputation for moving quickly against the powerless and very cautiously against the powerful. An ordinary Filipino can be arrested and immediately feel the full weight of the State. But when the accused happens to possess money, influence, connections, lawyers, or political allies, the wheels of justice suddenly seem to require lubrication. Cases take years, as in the sequestration cases involving the father of the incumbent president. Hearings become television performances, as in the ongoing impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte. Prosecution spokespersons issue statements while defense lawyers issue counter-statements, much to the chagrin of a tired public.
And somewhere in the middle of all this chaotic noise, public money disappears through the ultimate political maneuver: Leave the country while transferring wealth to dummies. The constitutional right to travel has consequently become the centerpiece of the debate. As a lawyer, I fully understand what the Constitution provides whenever human rights and due process are invoked. But as a former law enforcer, I am dumbfounded by the most basic question of all: What about the ordinary Filipino’s quest for justice? Rights cannot become weapons reserved for the powerful. Government officials who cannot prevent potentially accountable persons such as Co, Legarda, and Leviste from leaving before an investigation is completed must at least explain why they failed to act responsibly and promptly. Otherwise, the public is entitled to suspect that the system is not merely inefficient. It may be selective.
Back in my earlier days in the Bureau of Immigration, the Department of Justice had a tool called a Watchlist Order (WLO), which practically had the same effect as a Hold Departure Order (HDO), until the WLO rules were eventually declared unconstitutional. The lesson from that experience should be clear. The right to travel can be abused when politics enters the picture. And in the Philippines, corruption investigations rarely remain purely legal. They become political almost immediately. I go back to the PDAF investigations, where the big fish managed to evade accountability for many reasons, the principal one being political. Every investigation has a faction and an ally. Every administration eventually discovers that today’s political enemies can become tomorrow’s fugitives or tomorrow’s allies. That is why many Filipinos have become increasingly cynical about every new ‘fight against corruption.’
We have watched administrations promise to fight corruption, only to discover that corruption becomes unacceptable when committed by political opponents and strangely tolerable when committed by political friends. What we have is a selective-accountability problem. Whether under Arroyo, Aquino, Duterte, or Marcos Jr., administrations have perfected the art of weaponizing investigations while simultaneously protecting their own. An educated public ought to notice when government suddenly becomes aggressive against one group and strangely timid toward another, something is amiss. When one suspect is dragged before the cameras while another quietly leaves the country or when one is prosecuted while another is given immunity, there is something unholy cooking. When an administration promises ‘no sacred cows’ but somehow keeps finding exceptions, there is definitely abuse.
Over time, hopefully not too long, Filipinos may finally understand that although the law can encompass every offense, political connections can sometimes make accountability disappear. That is a dangerous lesson for a democracy. As Ombudsman Jesus Remulla has pointed out, our justice systems can be faulty. And when an accused person no longer feels safe in the hands of law enforcement, as Vice President Sara Duterte herself has recently declared, society can eventually stop trusting its institutions. When trust collapses, mob justice becomes tempting. Military intervention can become enticing. Violent changes in government begin to look attractive to people who have lost faith in the institutions meant to protect them. But the answer to a weak justice system is not vigilantism or violent regime change. The answer is a stronger justice system.
To be continued
Siegfred has a diversified set of education and experiences which has made him a game changer and a servant leader in organizations. His professional degrees came from the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York, Ateneo Law School, and University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA. His corporate experiences include stints as general counsel for the country’s flag carrier, a food exporter with manufacturing plants in Davao and in Laguna, and a sports distributor company. Siegfred is a former soldier and a lawyer by profession, a teacher and inspirational speaker by passion, and a book author and a writer with a mission.