In good company

Sandigan Associate Justice Gregory Ong is facing dismissal as his ties with Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged brains behind the P10-billion pork barrel scam, has been unmasked.

Ong allegedly fixed a case filed against Napoles in the Sandiganbayan years ago when she and several Marine officers were acquitted in the sale of low-quality and overpriced Kevlar helmets to the Philippine Marine Corps.

He should not be allowed to stay a minute longer in the antigraft court, if his accusers are proven to be right.

That kind of misbehavior can be infectious.

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But on second thought, why should Ong’s alleged misbehavior infect his colleagues when many of them are already reportedly corrupt?

He’s in good company at the Court of Appeals, and in many lower courts.

A corrupt judicial system naturally breeds corrupt members of the bench.

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I am closely watching two Court of Appeals justices who have been reportedly negotiating the acquittal of Amin Boratong, who has  been convicted by a lower court for drug trafficking.

Boratong ran the Pasig “tiangge,” or flea market, where methamphetamine hydrochloride, or “shabu,” was sold openly until it was raided in 2006.

The drug flea market was a stone’s throw away from the Pasig City Hall.

The late police Director Marcelo “Jun” Ele led the raid that closed down the illegal drugs market which had operated for many years.

I will not allow the efforts of Jun Ele, myself and my brother Erwin go to waste just because of some corrupt appellate court justices.

Erwin and I reported the existence of the shabu tiangge to then Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Art Lomibao, who assigned Ele to plan and lead the raid.

I received an intelligence report that the negotiations between the two appellate court justices and Boratong’s wife, Mimi, started in 2012.

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Meanwhile, the Court of Appeals has shown an obvious bias against the six Navy officers and men charged in the lower courts for the alleged murder of Ensign Philip Pestaño in 1995.

It has dismissed several petitions of the accused for a review of their case because the Office of the Ombudsman, they claim, erred in filing the murder case against them.

The Navy men are backed up by the results of several investigations that revealed the fact that Pestaño killed himself.

The findings of suicide were made by the National Bureau of Investigation, the Western Police District (now the Manila Police District), the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) and Dr. Raquel Fortun, a private forensics expert.

The appellate court, for one reason or the other, refuses to listen to the Navy men’s plea that they are innocent.

Why does the Court of Appeals play dumb to the plea of innocence by the Navy men?

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It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the Navy men are telling the truth: Pestaño killed himself.

Dr. Fortun was hired by the Pestaño family to conduct her own examination of Philip’s body after the three agencies concluded it was a suicide.

But Fortun, despite the high professional fee paid to her by the Pestaños, agreed it was a suicide.

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Why do I keep insisting on the innocence of the Navy men and by doing this, sound like a broken record?

Because as things stand, the six obviously can’t get a fair trial in our courts.

Perhaps public opinion can make the courts listen to their plea.