Must not Malacañang step now into what’s happening in Navotas?
Credit to Author: Mauro Gia Samonte| Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2020 17:47:06 +0000
In our column two Sundays ago, we endeavored to ventilate the concern of Chairman Wilfredo Mariano of Barangay Tangos, Navotas City in line with this column’s tradition of accommodating the concerns of small people who are otherwise powerless to get their messages across to government authorities. Before a select group of media people, the barangay official feared he was being set up for jail already without criminal charges against him being heard yet at all. According to Mariano, Navotas City Mayor Tobias “Toby” Tiangco has caused the filing of kidnapping charges against him, which the mayor denied.
We made sure to publish his denial, “in its entirety,” as he requested, in our subsequent column.
But, under the law, when you are charged with kidnapping, you cannot avail of the relief of bail and the moment the investigating fiscal files the information, the court immediately issues a warrant for your arrest. So, the beleaguered barangay chairman sought to avert this imminent eventuality of his arrest by writing President Rodrigo Duterte, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año and Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, pleading for intervention in order to save him from premature incarceration.
We do not have any information on whether Mariano got the intervention he sought from Malacañang, but, through press statements being circulated around, we get to know about barangay councilmen of other Navotas City barangay being also charged with kidnapping.
One press statement alleges one Danny Ang, the father of a candidate for city councilor in 2016, Dan Israel “DI” Ang, had been sentenced to a two-year imprisonment for grave coercion for having accosted an alleged vote-buyer, Roderick Bernal, reportedly a Tiangco supporter.
Normally, such a case, involving a minor offense, under the law could have been subjected first to mediation, but it was directly brought to the court, which after swift proceedings rendered a guilty verdict for Ang, sentencing him to two years in prison.
Also, a barangay kagawad, Amor Trades of Barangay Northbay Boulevard South, reportedly apprehended another suspected vote-buyer, Gaspar Bucatacat, in the Navotas port area and turned him over to the Maritime police. The Tiangcos allegedly intervened and asked Trades to drop the charges against the suspected vote-buyer, otherwise they would be filing a kidnapping case against him, even as Bucatcat has admitted he voluntarily went with his apprehending officer.
Trades reportedly agreed, paving the way for the release of the suspected vote-buyer. But after sometime, Trades was notified that a case of unlawful arrest related to the incident was filed against him.
Concerned citizens of Navotas view this as a menace quite akin to gangsterism employed by hooligans in intimidating and silencing enemies.
Now, this is truly alarming.
On the one hand, it would appear that Mayor Tiangco is having an easy time neutralizing political enemies, whose only choices are succumb to pressure from trumped up criminal charges or get jailed.
If we are to believe Mariano, the Mayor had coerced him into implicating former vice mayor Lutgardo Cruz and son Raymond Cruz, Tiangco’s political rivals in Navotas, in exchange for dropping the kidnapping charges against him. It just so happened that the barangay head would not droop to such dastardly level, and, at the risk of being really jailed early, on he maintains his defiance of the alleged Tiangco threat.
On the other hand, if Mayor Tiangco is to be believed, don’t we have here a case of a barangay council being composed of not just criminals but kidnappers at that?
Heavens, what’s happening to Navotas!
The city is dear to me in some special way. On the shores adjoining the fish port, my kumpare used to reside during the period of my active push of the workers strike movement in the upheavals of the seventies. My kumpare was the vice president of the labor union we organized at the Makabayan Publishing Corp., Kamao, of which I was president. Those shores had been venue to many of our revolutionary teach-ins and dgs, and on many occasions the site of planning of our moves in the Makabayan strike, which communized the entire Araneta Center in April 1991. As readers would recall now, I had declared my rapture from the Jose Maria Sison agenda of protracted people’s war and in its stead, I am now pursuing a course of quiet yet sustained strategy of economic empowerment of the working class. Until today, Navotas continues to be a hub of impoverished masses, a rich ground for planting on the seeds of that strategy. The upsurge of political violence in the city imperils my current silent move in the Navotas environs of bettering the lives of Philippine hoi polloi.
It is high time the President stepped into the controversy. Get to the bottom. Who between Mayor Tiangco and his detractors is lying. If the mayor, then let the Department of the Interior and Local Government apply the full force of law and deal him the necessary penalty, whatever that is.
On the other hand, if those Navotas barangay councilmen are indeed guilty, as alleged in the Tiangco-instigated kidnapping charges, then throw them out as bad eggs from their respective barangay councils.
The way the issue appears now as having the potential of exploding into a violent clash among the disputants, what could suffer ultimately is my own quiet agenda of pushing for the economic empowerment of the poor folks of Navotas.
That agenda can only prosper in an atmosphere of peace, order and social harmony.