Pala-isip

MANILA, Philippines—An estimated P128 million that was withdrawn by ex-military comptroller Carlos Garcia’s family from the bank accounts cited in their plunder case is now “beyond reach,” Special Prosecutor Wendell Sulit said Tuesday. Sulit told reporters that the money was withdrawn before the bank accounts were frozen. “How will you freeze air?” she said, adding that it was Garcia’s wife Clarita and their children who had withdrawn the money, and that there was no admission from Garcia that it was given to him. Asked why the return of the money was not made a condition in the plea bargain with Garcia, Sulit said it was feared that the retired major general would play hardball and that the government might end up losing the case. “If we will haggle and tell him, ‘We won’t agree if you will not return that,’ we will both take a hardline stance. The plunder case will continue. Before you know it, he will be acquitted and we will end up with nothing,” she said. Sulit expressed the prose...

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer . The plea bargain that government prosecutors struck with the lawyers of ex-general Carlos Garcia last week is a legal abomination. It violates both the explicit letter of the law and the spirit that gives law life; it makes a mockery of the justice system at the very moment that system is under great stress; not least, it feeds the cynicism of the public, more and more of whom believe that Lady Justice is not blind. When the moneyed are haled to court, she only pretends to close her eyes. Garcia, whose sons were caught in the United States carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2003 and whose wife admitted that their inexplicable family fortune came from bribes, stands (or rather, stood) accused of the non-bailable crime of plunder for accumulating over P300 million in personal wealth while he was still serving in the Armed Forces. Last Saturday, after negotiating a plea bargain and posting bail of P60,000, he walked out of prison. Technically...