Nothing illegal, just plain insensitive

As usual, the Philippine media got it all wrong and upside down in its reporting of the controversy surrounding the "midnight" pardon by President Arroyo of convicted double-murderer Claudio Teehankee Jr.

Arroyo did nothing illegal in granting executive clemency to Teehankee, as the power to do so is vested in the presidency. The president simply exercised that prerogative and broke no rules in doing so.

The timing of Teehankee's departure from prison, in the dead of night, is not without any reason that cannot stand the test of plausibility. For all we know, Teehankee may just have preferred to leave at an unholy hour, and there is no saying that he cannot.

But Arroyo cannot escape charges of being insensitive. By ordering the release of Teehankee, especially at this time, the president succeeded in showing the extent to which she has become detached from the sentiments of her own people.

It is wrong for the Philippine media to focus on how the executive clemency may have affected the Hultmans, the family of one of the shooting victims of Teehankee. Of course they were not expected to stand up and applaud, so why the overkill in reporting their distress.

Not that the Hultmans do not deserve attention in their grief. In fact they deserve all the sympathy, understanding and love for having had to bear such a tremendous loss and then to relive the agony again with the freedom granted to the killer of their daughter.

But the Hultmans are just one symptom of the overall insensitivity displayed by one of the most callous Philippine presidents ever to human dignity. Arroyo was not just being insensitive to the feelings of the Hultmans, she was being insensitive to an entire nation.

The Philippines has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to live. This is the same country where, not too long ago, a graduating nursing student was mercilessly shot dead by addicts who merely wanted her cellphone.

This is the same country where priests molest young girls during confession and fathers rape their own daughters. This is where killers no longer even feel the compunction to run, preferring instead to simply walk away from the scene of a crime as if nothing happened.

Arroyo is insensitive not because she failed to see her actions would rip the Hultmans again but because she has extinguished the only hope that citizens of the Philippines have of at least seeing criminals punished, of giving life to the notion that crime does not pay.

Everywhere they look, Filipinos see an unrelenting breakdown of institutions and a steady erosion of trust in those upon whom the great expectations of society for a just, orderly and productive life is reposed.

When moral guardians and law enforcers increasingly become the very embodiment of what they are supposed to guard against or enforce the law upon, the citizens of a country become desperate for signs that, despite all the chaos, things will still turn out well in the end.

Keeping Teehankee in prison despite his supposed good behavior would have sent Filipinos the clearest signal that, wherever possible and circumstances permitting, justice can still be served in all its uncompromising effectivity.

Seeing criminals behind bars, in the few instances that they do, serves the critical purpose of reassuring the public that this country has not yet reached the tipping point into anarchy.