Congress’ bane

Lady Justice has yet to net Ruben Ecleo Jr.

While the court Friday found him guilty of parricide for killing his wife Alona Bacolod 10 years ago and sentenced him to life behind bars, only heaven knows where Ecleo is still hiding.

Friday’s conviction was not Ecleo’s first. Last February, the Supreme Court sustained with finality the Sandiganbayan’s ruling that sentenced him to up to 30 years in jail for graft.

The most honorable response the members of the Lower House can do in response to the Ecleo question is expel him without qualms from their ranks immediately.

Let the Supreme Court hurry and furnish the House of Representatives a copy of its decision, lest citizens conclude (as they already insinuate), that the congressmen are using ceremony as an excuse to delay the administration of justice.

The people’s suspicion is logical. Why do the congressmen have to wait for a copy of the high tribunal’s decision when Ecleo’s extended absence in Congress already constituted disorderly behavior for which the Constitution granted his colleagues the power to expel him by a two-thirds majority vote?

The congressman of the lone district of Dinagat Island who is deity to members of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA) has been a fugitive for some time.

While authorities devise an operation that should be expedited to catch Ecleo, members of the PBMA are not expected to rewrite their script any time soon.

But their interpretation of their master’s troubles as publicity for the cult and a guru’s redemptive pain may in fact be part of an elaborate plot to prevent authorities from demanding that they disclose Ecleo’s whereabouts.

The fakir is not promoting the PBMA at all. Who in his right mind will join a group headed by someone who thumbs his nose at the law?

The Lower House’s bane is not suffering for the PBMA. The first time he was arrested, he used his devotees as a human shield and sacrificed more than a dozen lives, none his, in a shootout with authorities.

If in fact PBMA members have marching orders to keep Ecleo’s whereabouts confidential, that opens the cult to charges of obstruction of justice.

Still, Ecleo has the option of chancing upon a genuine stroke of enlightenment.

Let him turn himself in.

That would save his followers a lot of trouble and put souls–Alona’s and those of others who perished as the parricide case dragged on–to rest.