|
As part
of our editorial policy, this paper prefers to leave the
coverage of crime stories to the tabloids. However, the
carnage at the Cabuyao, Laguna, branch of one of the
country’s biggest banks on Friday was such an outrage as
to compel us to examine the issue of law and order—and
how their breakdown affects the conduct of business.
The P12
million to P15 million that the armed robbers reportedly
grabbed represented an amount much bigger than those
ordinarily lost in most bank heists. While Rizal
Commercial Banking Corp.’s insurers will take the
immediate financial hit from the robbery, it is the
entire banking system and the millions of Filipinos who
do business with them that must ultimately bear the
financial burden as bank-insurance premiums shoot up.
One of the facts of life in a capitalist economy coupled
with a “soft” state is that the cost of doing business,
whether in banking or public utilities, is invariably
passed on to customers. That is the quantitative aspect
of Friday’s gruesome bloodbath.
Qualitatively, no compensation would ever be enough for
the loss of 10 human lives. The victims were engaged in
what should have been routine work; they were in the
process of trying to make a living when the armed
robbers—posing as police officers, unsurprisingly
enough—barged in and destroyed what hope the victims and
their families had for a better life. News reports on
the anguish that the victims’ loved ones are going
through have tugged at the hearts of millions who can
only sympathize with them. That the lives of so many—and
not just the fatalities’—have been shattered forever
gives rise to righteous indignation.
The
problem is that the Cabuyao bank massacre so stunned the
nation that many of us could only react in knee-jerk
fashion.
The
antigun lobby, for one, has revived its call for a
nationwide ban on firearms, with little thought to the
fact that the resources of our law enforcement agencies
are already strained as they try to the get to the
bottom of Friday’s incident. Diverting police attention
away from the Cabuyao case and toward the enforcement of
a comprehensive gun ban would only allow the massacre’s
perpetrators to slip even farther through the
authorities’ dragnet.
Besides,
as past bids to regulate gun ownership have shown, it is
only the law-abiding citizens—who go through the trouble
of having their weapons licensed and forensically
profiled and of securing permits to carry their firearms
outside of their homes—who do obey gun bans. Criminals,
by definition, have no respect for laws and regulations;
they are, in fact, emboldened by the knowledge that the
government has done them the favor of disarming their
prospective victims.
Then
there is the proposal from at least two senators to
impose capital punishment once more. Fortunately, some
of their colleagues have managed to keep their wits
about them; they point out that no conclusive study has
determined that the death penalty discourages the
wayward, the confused and innately wicked from
committing heinous crimes. Besides, capital punishment
continues to be informally enforced in this country
notwithstanding the official moratorium adopted by our
catolica cerrada President.
Criminal
suspects are routinely savaged—etymological root of the
Filipino-Hispanic term salvaje or salbahe
and further corrupted as “salvage”—in this country with
nary an objection from politicians. In fact, one of the
proponents of the restoration of capital punishment had
himself been implicated in the summary execution of a
dozen or so criminal suspects in 1995—which fact has
evidently not barred his rise in the political
firmament.
Notwithstanding the periodic “salvaging” of suspects,
unspeakable crimes continue to be committed and, far too
often, without anyone answering for them. And therein
lies the root of the ongoing crime wave.
Criminality remains widespread in this country because
crime continues to be a profitable enterprise. Criminals
have been allowed to get away with offenses ranging from
cell-phone snatching to the plunder of billions of pesos
in state funds. The temptation to go beyond the bounds
of the law has proved irresistible to the criminally
inclined, who see far too few offenders getting their
just desserts.
Even
those who are somehow detected, arrested, prosecuted and
imprisoned still manage to enjoy the fruits of their
felonious pursuits. The legal system is shot full of
loopholes—manned as it is by crooks and incompetents,
while our penal institutions can turn into vacation
spots for inmates who have the money to buy their
jailers’ favor.
Given
the amateurish disposition—and we’re being kind here—of
our law enforcement coupled with the vulnerability to
graft of our prosecutorial, judicial and penal agencies,
little wonder, then, that the perpetrators of the
Cabuyao massacre had the gall to take extreme measures.
They
probably sensed they could get away with it—and they
probably will. Talk about impunity.
The only
sure way of defeating crime is the certainty of
punishment. Countries that enjoy low crime rates are
able to do so—not because they have gun bans or
regularly execute criminals—but because their
law-enforcement and justice systems are professionally
administered. The Swiss, for instance, have liberal gun
laws and a long tradition of citizens’ militias, but
incidents of gun-toting hoodlums going on a rampage are
hardly ever reported in Switzerland.
What the
Swiss do have are no-nonsense police and magistrates who
perform their duties according to the highest
professional standards. Would that we have the same
professionals in our country, too. |
