Cracks showed a couple of times in Talisay City Mayor Socrates Fernandez’s image of a benign, almost meek, Bible-quoting leader in his renewed defense of adopted son Joavan in his latest conflict with the law.
First, the mayor reneged on a promise to the Talisay police chief to surrender his son for police questioning following the April 12 shooting of car watchman Eduardo Largo Jr.
The father, believing in his son’s innocence, said he would rather wait for a warrant of arrest, and for Joavan to show up at home.
This also showed the mayor’s own lack of trust in the police handling of an investigation. Instead of helping them find answers, he sat back and allowed Joavan to make himself scarce. As a high official, wasn’t this tantamount to obstruction of justice?
Second, irked by the media’s coverage of his son’s arrest– and Joavan’s past escapades — the mayor tried to grab the camera of Cebu Daily News photographer Amelito Tecson.
The mayor indignantly asked the photographer why Tecson was taking photos without his permission in the jail.
(You don’t hear that kind of demand when the mayor is cutting the ribbon of a new project or going about his campaign.)
Then the mayor angrily warned Tecson he would file a complaint against him with the Commission on Human Rights.
Was that a threat? Perhaps Mayor Soc should actually go ahead and submit an affidavit about his camera-grabbing attempt to document a desperate move that came dangerously close to a breach of press freedom.
CDN’s photographer was there to do his job. Was the mayor doing his official duty?
The arrest of a crime suspect – in this case a man wanted by the court in an ongoing trial that Joavan had skipped attending, one who is also the subject of a police manhunt for firing a gun without provocation in a midnight driveby that seriously wounded a Talisay resident – is itself an official response to a violation of basic human rights.
This is the nth time Joavan has inflicted harm on Talisay residents with his outbursts and then taunted law enforcers by disappearing
Almost a month had passed before Talisay police caught up with him. They found him driving up to the doorstep of his father’s house, moving freely about, confident that he wouldn’t be touched.
It’s Joavan’s reputation as an “untouchable” in Talisay that has embarassed the police and weakened the mayor’s standing as a chief executive and enforcer of the law.
Now that Joavan is in police custody, and new charges have been filed for illegal possession of a gun and grenade, the test is for the criminal justice system to actually work.
The mayor is adopted father of Joavan by personal choice, but father of Talisay City by public mandate. He should stand back and let the law takes its course.
Joavan is an adult who can face the consequences of his actions.
With an election less than a week away, Mayor Fernandez also has to face the people to account for his acts or omissions of leadership.