A corrupt judge + a corrupt litigant =

The Tramp with the Trump, back when she didn't have to bribe anyone so she could travel using stolen money.


If the Supreme Court ultimately lets this absolutely corrupt judge get away, I am going to be a very, very unhappy boy. Here's why:

The judge: Oscar Barrientos

The court: The Regional Trial Court of Manila

The case: Twenty-three (23) criminal charges of dollar-salting -- what we now call money-laundering -- committed by Imelda Marcos with the late Roberto Benedicto and his subordinates back when her husband was still - ahem! -- a living thief and dictator.

(Now, he's just a dead thief and dictator -- which Imelda claims isn't only untrue but is a libelous statement to make! "So, sue me," somebody said. That Imelda did.

(Then, proving that the Honorable Judge Barrientos isn't going to be the first and last officer of the court that ill-gotten wealth can buy, guess who decided that, yes, there is libel in there because, just maybe, history never happened and Marcos may not have been a thief and a dictator after all? "Baboons," someone called them. But that might be giving them too much credit. But back to our Judge Barrientos story... )

The issue: Imelda wanted to, as usual, travel. Her lawyers filed a "Motion for Leave to Travel" indicating that their peripatetic client wanted to go to (1) Lourdes in France (perhaps to cleanse her sins) and (2) Rome in Italy (perhaps to resume her sinning).

The judge granted the motion...but

The corrupt act: His order of approval went beyond what Imelda's motion asked for. He allowed Imelda to go to Lourdes, then to Rome -- and to London! Even if Imelda never said she was going to London? Yes.

More corruption: Realizing how embarrasingly obvious it was that someone must have been paid by somebody so that Imelda's last-minute travel plans could be inserted into that court order of approval, the Honorable Judge Barrientos went from bad to worse. He met right inside his office with a lawyer of Imelda; after the necessary whispers were exchanged (along with anything else that may have been sought or promised or bought and sold) -- presto! -- the Marcos lawyers had a new afterthought of a motion: "Yes, thank you Judge, our client really wanted to go to London, too!"


The happy corrupt litigant.


(One of those lawyers, according to this link, has been placed under investigation by the Supreme Court.)

The grievance: The PCGG and the DOJ went to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, respectively. The PCGG sought disciplinary action against the judge. The DOJ sought his inhibition. The Supreme Court (apparently) simply sustained the Court of Appeals' ruling directing the judge's inhibition. So now he's out of the case. But...

(Read this link for more about what what this judge did and what should have been done to him.)

My problem:Is that it? Would that even qualify as a slap on the wrist? The Honorable Judge wasn't just acting as Imelda's over-eager travel agent. Here was a judge who went out of his way to defeat the good reasons behind the rule that seeks to prevent plunderers from simply buying a first-class plane ticket abroad, to where they can count and spend their loot.

The Supreme Court has removed ordinary court employees for failing to do their work or for just being absent. They even dismissed a court interpreter for -- of all things -- having an affair with a married policeman! Now, here's a judge who actually worked -- for Imelda. He was ever-present -- to do her bidding. And what did the Court Administrator recommend the Supreme Court should do to Judge Barrientos? Nothing. Nada. If the Supreme Court wants to send the message of zero-tolerance for corruption in the judiciary, then here's your boy. Kick him out. In fact, charge him with a crime under Article 206 of the Revised Penal Code.

I am so unhappy that the Supreme Court missed this chance to kick out a corrupt judge. How about you? If you are, too, here are the persons you can contact:

Send email to the Supreme Court's Public Information Office.

Or better yet, make a phone call to the Office of the Court Administrator at telephone numbers (632) 523-7385 or (632) 525-1238.

(Now, that was a nice, relieving rant.)

Leon is growing up in a world of war, hatred and forgetfulness

Yesterday, a centuries-old war still being fought in Sulu between adversaries bound by the unfortunate accidents of colonial history and religious identity re-opened an old front that had been silent since the LRT bombings in 2000.

The nearly simultaneous bombings in various Philippine urban centers including the bombing of a bus in the Makati financial district, are a reminder that "terrorism" isn't such a neat category of violence and that putting it in the same phrase as "war" oversimplifies both the notion of war and the motives of "terrorists."

Agence France Press: Aftermath of the February 14 bombing in Makati

In the United States, September 11, 2001 is regarded as "the day the world changed." It is as if previous deaths in just as massive numbers elsewhere in the world caused by ideologically-motivated acts of violence were insignificant losses of life, regrettable but forgettable. (Yet, why should these two masssacres, carried out sixty years ago within one week of each other -- by Americans! -- be less "world-changing" than any other?) For many Americans as much as for their government, 9/11 is the the point at which the American system of government transformed itself in order to confront the phenomenon of “terrorism” associated with groups bound by an adherence to a militant Islamic perspective.

In the Philippines, however, the relationship between violence, the State, its legal system and the Muslim identity goes back to the 14th century, when the first pre-colonial inhabitants of the Sulu archipelago that now forms part of the Philippine southern Mindanao region were converted to Islam. The arrival of Spanish colonizers in the 16th century also saw the coming of what the anthropologist Charles Frake calls “(t)he first terrorist label – Moro.” The “Moro” label was attached by the Spanish colonizers to the indigenous Muslims not only because of the common belief they shared with the Moors who once occupied Spain, but also because of the armed resistance they put up against Spanish (and later, American) colonial government. This armed conflict with Spanish colonizers was not limited to the southern Mindanao region; it extended to parts of what are now Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The area of that conflict of more than 500 years ago is now reflected in the Southeast Asian version of the United States’ so-called “war on terrorism,” which also encompasses Singapore and parts of southern Thailand. This should be a sobering fact in dissecting how Islamic “terrorism” in Southeast Asia (not just in the Philippines) should be dealt with by the legal systems of affected States. This version of that American-led “war” is embedded in a longer, more complex history than merely the conspiracies of ‘terrorist’ Islamic groups against modern Western interests.

In the specific Philippine context of this “war,” the issues are complicated even more by the unresolved baggage not only of colonization, but of identity and a long struggle for self-determination against the Philippine State. Filipino Muslims come from thirteen (13) distinct ethno-linguistic indigenous communities, all of whom are collectively called “Moros” and who share the Islamic faith. The Moros includes the larger Tausug, Maranaw and Maguindanao communities, which are the communities from where the three presently most prominent Muslim armed groups in the southern Philippines -- the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) , the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf group (or “ASG,” in the vocabulary of the Philippine military) -- recruit their members. Long before September 11, 2001, the ‘war on terrorism’ in the Philippines was not a ‘war on terrorism.” Depending on which side sees it, some parts of what is now a ‘war on terrorism’ was a war against Muslim secessionist groups – first against the MNLF and now, against the MILF. On the other hand, the secessionist groups -- but particularly the MILF -- see themselves as a ‘national liberation movement,’ in both its classic anti-colonial sense and in the sense that the MILF seeks its own State in the Mindanao area.



The colonial role of the United States in the Philippines is inseparable from how Moro secessionist leaders view Americans as having first colonized the Moros and then ensuring the present “colonization” of the Moros by the Philippine State. For the United States to now enlist its former colony in a ‘war against terrorism” that is perceived as directed principally at Muslim communities can only rekindle the historic Moro enmity against America. Thus, for a significant number of Moros what was (before September 11, 2001) merely a long-running secessionist war between the Philippines and Moros, could, if it has not yet, become a jihad against America itself. This possibility and its potential may have prompted the US Government to uncharacteristically involve itself in the on-going efforts at forging a peace agreement between the GRP and the MILF. The US Government has been pouring significant amounts of official development assistance into former MNLF as well as presently-MILF-controlled areas.

This, however, has apparently not stopped the emergence of links, individual and informal, between the MILF (and as will be discussed later, “members” of the ASG) with such known “terrorist” organizations as Jemayah Islamiya (JI) and Al Qaeda. While the MILF leadership denies any official link and denies that it is “anti-American,” the Philippine Government has consistently claimed that, at the very least, the MILF harbors individuals identified as either (or both) members of JI and Al Qaeda and, at most, works with these ‘terrorist’ groups.

With respect to leaders of the ASG, the links are less ambiguous but still organizationally ill-defined. It is known that the late Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, the first leader of the Abu Sayyaf – which means ‘bearer of the sword’ -- had “studied Islamic jurisprudence in Saudi Arabia (and thus became an Ustadz or preacher), received military training in Libya and fought in the Taliban war against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan.” An excellent series written by the Philippine Daily Inquirer's Fe Zamora describes him as “(a)n advocate of a "pure" form of Islam, (who) disapproved of TV, movies, dancing, songs on radio, or even laughing with bared teeth. His was a voice in the wilderness among Muslim Filipinos, who had been moderate Sunnis for centuries.”

That the late Janjalani was exposed to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is certain: “Instead of going home to (his home province of) Basilan after finishing Islamic studies and military science in Saudi Arabia and Libya (Janjalani) signed-up as a mujahideen in the 10-year jihad in Afghanistan. It was most likely he was recruited to the guerilla unit of Prof. Abdul Rasul Abu Sayyaf, who organized his group in 1986.” What is curious and ironic is the way the United States government seems to be in denial of its role in the creation of the ASG. In the U.S. State Department’s description of the ASG, it states that “Some ASG leaders allegedly fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet war and are students and proponents of radical Islamic teachings.”

A year after Janjalani came back to Basilan in 1990, he joined a 20-man group that called itself “Al Harakatul al Islamiya or the Islamic Movement.” It was led by a former MNLF leader, Wahab Akbar (who later on became Governor of Basilan). The following year, the group began its violent campaign, carrying out grenade attacks in two Mindanao cities and kidnapping and in some cases beheading hostages, including a Catholic priest. In its first press conference, the group not only sought ransom but raised “ideological” demands, including the removal of Catholic symbols in Muslim communities. It was in such radio interviews that “Abu Sayyaf” was used by Janjalani to refer to the group. By early 1995, the 20-man group had grown to about 600, mainly from disaffected MNLF rebels. It was in 1995 that the ASG carried out its most violent act thus far: attacking the large town of Ipil in mainland Mindanao, leaving 54 persons dead. Five years later, it carried out a series of attacks that cemented its “terrorist” label (apparently, the U.S. Government did not consider the deaths of 54 Filipinos important enough; the ASG was designated a “foreign terrorist organization”only in 1997). In 2000, the ASG kidnapped 21 (including 10 Western) tourists from Malaysia and held them hostage for 5 months. In 2001, they kidnapped another group of tourists, including 3 American citizens, two of whom (the missionary Martin Burnham and Guillermo Sobero) were eventually killed, with Sobero being beheaded. Without its expanded size, the ASG could not have carried out these series of “terrorist” acts that continue until today.

Frake explains the ASG’s growth as having “filled a logical gap in the identity matrix of Philippine Muslim insurgency.” He says that “(t)he Tausug-dominated MNLF is identified with secular Islam and is led by a non-traditional, university-educated elite. The leadership of the Maguindanao-dominated MILF, on the other hand, though it sometimes employs Islamicist rhetoric in opposition to the MNLF, is drawn from the established political elite, which is secular in background and orientation. In contrast to these two movements, the program of Abu Sayyaf is militantly Islamicist.”



Up until September 11, 2001, therefore, the Philippines had been waging a ‘war’ against ‘terrorism’ (and not “the” “war against terrorism” that the United States would later usurp as its mission post-9/11).

Should we compensate the victims of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship? Or do we shave the head of Imelda Marcos, make her put on an orange shirt with

Imelda's future suite

a big "P" at the back, set aside some space at the Women's Correctional Institution in Manila, then ask the cable TV companies to open a new cable channel meant solely to show how she will live the glamorous life in the next 40 years dealing with (1) surot inside a tiny cubicle partitioned with cardboard and plywood, (2) the warm ventilating recycled breath of her cellmates (jail capacity: 500; actual inmate population: 951), (3) P10 meals of NFA-rice and, ah, something that the relative of the warden who won the rigged bidding for the jail's food supply calls "soup"and of course (4)fun showers with any gang of women Marcos loyalist inmates that should be all hers to lead.

Coming soon?

If you really want to know whether that will ever happen maybe you can ask here and here. For now read this: here are two papers written by an LL.M. student in New York University Law School's Global Public Service Lawyering Program (GPSLP).

The author was involved in the effort to recover $683 Million in (the known) Swiss deposits that Imelda Marcos (using, among other pseudonyms, "Jane Ryan") and her late husband amassed from 1968 to 1986. He was also involved in the drafting of the pending bill in the Philippine Congress that seeks to amend the agrarian reform law and use $200 Million of the recovered Marcos Swiss deposits to compensate the dictatorship's victims. The first paper ("Plunder and Pain") deals with the need to establish a Truth Commission to document both the brutality of the Marcos dictatorship and the greed of the Marcoses and their associates. The second paper ("Upholding Human Rights and Fighting Corruption") deals with the on-going debates in Manila over how the process of compensating the victims of human rights violations during the dictatorship should happen. That process has been delayed by endless multi-country litigation (which may have finally ended last week in a US court) and derailed by the remnants of the dictatorship who, with their ill-gotten wealth, have climbed back to the heights of political power.

The first paper mentions the work of the International Center for Transitional Justice, a New York-based NGO whose lawyers and associates played an active role in the Truth Commission and transitional justice processes in South Africa, Chile, Peru and East Timor, among others. The ICTJ has met with some Philippine government and non-government leaders on the possibility of establishing a Truth Commission in Manila. Whatever the outcome of that, these papers deal with unlearned lessons in transitional justice or, more accurately, of transitions that did not come with justice.

Rant and rage.

Children of the Abu Sayyaf's god

"While looking for academic (mostly, but non-academic as well) material for the memorandum I have to prepare for (somebody’s) the Justice William Brennan Liberty and National Security Project (where I interned back when I wrote this a few years ago), I was struck by two things: (1) the number, scope and depth of legal articles that had been written on the most specific issues involving the prosecution of suspected terrorists and (2) that none of what I saw (at least those that were electronically accessible through (some American law school’s) excellent library and links to academic journals and publications) had been written by writers who might be located in developing countries where terrorism is part of daily life, with its violence and the impact of such violence on immediately-affected communities.

"Was this merely because the (American law school’s) New York University Law School's technological reach (as well as that of the commercial electronic libraries that it allowed access to) deliberately did not cover or include material published in some countries, universities or law schools abroad? Or was it because there are no such materials?

"If it were the first, then it would be a significant inadequacy: American lawyers, and especially American human rights lawyers deeply engaged in policy advocacy, would gain much from the views and insights of lawyers (including human rights lawyers, legal academics and social scientists) from developing countries on law and terrorism. Whatever material on law and terrorism – whether lengthy law-journal articles or simple comments in publicly-available magazines (in print or in electronic form) – that comes from these developing-country legal sources may be insightful, given the presumed proximity of the writers to what is, literally, the battlefield in which “terrorism” (or militancy or whatever euphemism might be more appropriate) is spawned or fought. As it is, among American lawyers involved in the debates over legal issues arising from the U.S. Government’s conduct of its “war on terror” (and here I recall (a professor’s) reference to Jon Stewart’s humor, because I recall what Stewart once wrote about the ‘war on terror’ – where he asks why the common noun is now being used: is the US at war even against roller-coaster rides and its terrorizing effects?), the lines have been drawn and drawn so clearly that I now understand, in a way, what the (Liberty and National Security Project I'm working on)lawyers may have meant by their reference to “neutrality” in some areas of that debate. Whatever one’s side of that debate, it seems to be a debate predominantly engaged in by and within American and European academic and legal circles, a debate that concerns how the world might be shaped by this ‘war on terror’ yet without (seemingly) hearing any voice from among those who might represent not one of either side, but another perspective from another part of the world that might give a different context altogether to the issue.

"Not much, for instance, has been said about the impact of the ‘war on terrorism’ on overseas workers from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia or Bangladesh who continue to work in the Middle East, including in Iraq and Israel. Would the UN Migrant Workers treaty have any relevance in this largely intra-Western debate about the legality of everybody’s conduct in this ‘war’? Nor has much (as far as I can see) been heard about the legal issues surrounding the presence of American troops in the southern Philippines region or of the shifts in orientation of American military exercises in Southeast Asia since the ‘war on terror’ began. Everything, as (my law professor) noted, is “post 9/11.” Even massive deaths by tsunami are blithely compared to how Americans reacted to the numbers killed by terrorism on that apparently, for some, more significant day.

"On the other hand, it could simply be that not many in the developing world have taken the time and effort to write briefs, memos and articles about the legal impact on their people of this war. I hazard the view that writing about law and terror might be a luxury not easily affordable to law professors in poor developing country universities where tenure doesn’t mean anything more than being paid above the minimum wage and “publication,” while required, means printing a few hundred copies of a journal that will come out two years later. Human rights lawyers in NGOs of developing countries who might find time to pause from trying to convince foreign donors that there are other equally urgent concerns needing funding than what the donors think should be funded, may still not find a reason to ponder the meaning of law in a time of a ‘war on terrorism,’ if the life-and-death issues faced by the rural communities they try to serve are really the same life-and-death issues faced by their clients even in times of so-called peace.



"Still, there must be some view of, for example, some Muslim lawyer trying to free innocent Muslim boys in a Zamboanga detention cell from the prejudices of corrupt policemen emboldened by the distant encouragement they have been getting from no less than the President of America. I found one such link, happily, and I am still hoping to see more of these views as I move forward. Still, I realize that one casualty of the ‘war on terrorism’ is the disproportion with which the world (or perhaps the Western world and the Western media) sees the adverse human rights impact of the U.S. Government’s conduct: Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib become monstrosities that require all the energies of the forces of liberty to counter, while the fate of unnamed children who live and die in the jungles of Basilan, labeled terrorists but really just barefoot, hungry and with nowhere to go, are footnotes in the history of humanity’s conflicts. My intellect sees the importance of defending the rights of American citizens who volunteered to fight with the Taliban; but I wonder what the world can do for desperate peasant boys who would easily answer the call of a god that tells them to kill because they would otherwise die of hunger anyway?



"These are thoughts that will not make it to a law journal article and I suppose that may really be one reason why we don’t find much of this on what, supposedly, is the world-wide web.