Restitution and not retribution

John, in his own personal blog, Newsstand, remarked on the large number of  comments to his entry in this blog. He also pointed out something interesting: quite a few people (including me, as he pointed out, in my column for today, Estrada's Ghost Army, but only in passing) pointed out that there might have been a deeper reason behind Estrada's lawyers asking the court not to read its entire decision. In trying to make sense of Joseph Estrada's rise to the presidency and his fall from power, I eventually settled on a simple axiom: you don't kick a man when he's down. In tackling the story of Estrada and Singson's friendship gone sour, and the reasons why the electorate that watched Estrada fall poured into the streets when he was arrested, that axiom remained true and relevant to my mind. Unable to unite, the Edsa 1 forces were helpless to prevent Estrada's becoming president, in what was a pretty massive repudiation of the Edsa 1 political leadership. But then Estrada proceeded to galvanize opposition to himself by proposing Marcos's burial in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, then his attempts to bully media, and finally, his breaking one of the most iron-clad rules not only of our own, but Malay society in general: no one really minds what you do, so long as you do it discreetly and you don't flaunt your misbehavior. He kicked his enemies when they were down; he then kicked one of his own cronies when he was down; so he fell: but those who let him fall, rose up in his defense when, down and out, the victors of Edsa Dos proceeded to kick Estrada when he was down and out (this accounts, too, for the grudging respect the President gets from some circles today: when she seemed down and out, she somehow clung on to power). UP NCPAG Prof. Prospero de Vera said on ANC yesterday something that struck me. The Filipino concept of justice, he said, is one of restitution and not retribution. What would have addressed the interests of justice, he said, as far as the public's actual values are concerned, would have been for Estrada, upon conviction for plunder, to return his ill-gotten wealth. That's it. In which case it can be argued that imprisonment for many Filipinos is nothing more or less than a demonstration of raw power, but not justice. Everyone, I think, encounters sooner or later, cases involving poverty-stricken families more interested in a cash settlement in cases where one of their loved ones is maimed or killed in an accident. A trial, much less imprisonment, is less relevant both to their ever-pressing needs and sense of justice, than financial restitution. Part of this has to be the expectation, drummed in by centuries of experience, that a trial and even jail for the culprit involves a system that takes more out of the aggrieved family than is worth it: again, because of the family's pressing needs. Ironically, the wealthy, too, have a horror of the legal system not just because when caught doing wrong, they want to evade punishment (no one, regardless of class origins, ever readily submits to the justice system when they're the accused), but also due to their knowing as well, that in the cases where the accused is actually innocent, if it becomes a case involving media attention, they won't get justice, either. The blog Uniffors, in looking at the Estrada verdict, says this:

In a case like Erap’s, the people are, ultimately, the judge and jury. And they are not limited by the rules of evidence and other legalities because they are guided by their “sense of justice”. It’s neither good nor bad, right nor wrong; it’s just the way it is. It’s called the collective wisdom of the people. People will only say justice has been served if they believe justice has been served. That means they ask themselves: Was it prosecution or persecution? Were the scales of justice balanced or were they tilted? Was Lady Justice blind or blinded? The verdict on Erap should have put closure to the events that led to his downfall. But it did not because the trial and the verdict did not address the politics that was at the root of it all. It failed to transform a political issue into a judicial issue where one can say “case closed!” Erap succeeded in portraying himself as an underdog. And that negated any chance that people will accept the notion that no one is above the law. The conviction of Erap only proved to the weak and powerless, rightly or wrongly, that the powerful can and will do what they please and get away with it.

So how's this for a rule of thumb that crosses class divisions? The only real winners in the justice system are the lawyers. That's the consensus that exists in our society. And I can't help but return to an entry some time ago in this blog, We Filipinos.