Why does Gonzalez keep flip-flopping?

Examining the Alabang Boys caper in January, congressmen noticed something odd in Justice Sec. Raul Gonzalez. He had berated a narc major for “tainting” his department in saying that his prosecutors took bribes from drug suspects. Yet he was “visibly nice” to the suspects’ lawyer who had used his office stationery unauthorized. That time too, Gonzalez called in the NBI to investigate the bribery. Yet he kept clearing the prosecutors of any misconduct even before agents could submit findings. Supposedly he always saw to it that subordinates obeyed him. But he was quiet when the prosecutors swore that they couldn’t follow one particular order of his, lest they breach civil rights.

Gonzalez’s other inconsistencies surfaced. In the case of the Balasan Boys, the Iloilo chief prosecutor confessed to ignorance of the Secretary’s directive for his automatic review of all drug raps. Yet Gonzalez didn’t care. Worse was a suit in Zamboanga City. Gonzalez in 2007 had reviewed — and approved — the indictment of a Chinese narcotrader. Last December in the middle of trial he ordered the withdrawal of charges allegedly due to “weak evidence”.

Gonzalez’s blowing hot and cold on drug cases should irk his boss President Arroyo. As self-appointed anti-drug czarina, she impatiently had suspended his five subs in the Alabang Boys case for laxity. But Arroyo is forgiving of Gonzalez’s cartwheels, for reasons only the two of them know.

It’s not only on drug cases that Gonzalez tumbles. A P180-million land fraud in his Iloilo province sticks out. In Jan. 2008 a prosecutor approved the filing of syndicated estafa raps, non-bailable, against several accomplices. In April, however, Gonzalez downgraded the charge to bailable plain estafa. Barely two months later on appeal of the complaining counsel, Gonzalez restored the original, more serious indictment. That was already unprecedented in the justice department’s annals. But in Jan. 2009 Gonzalez again changed his mind and reverted the charge to lighter plain estafa. Naturally the plaintiffs and their lawyer smelled a rat and reported to the House of Reps good government committee.

In requesting a probe, the complainants said Gonzalez’s flip-flopping was suspicious: “It came in the face of persistent (talk) that the accused had been (lobbying) with DOJ officials for downgrading.” Indeed at that time, the Iglesia ni Cristo reportedly had investigated one of its members, who worked in Gonzalez’s office, for a string of case-fixing. Later the church directed the official to resign for staining its endorsement of him to his post. When he refused, it asked Malacañang to yank him out.

If province-mates are confused, so are foreigners. Recently Gonzalez somersaulted on a long-settled ruling on mixed ownership of corporations in nationalized industries. This set expatriates wondering if they must leave town or else face stiff charges for contracts signed under old DOJ opinions. It’s about the “control test” versus the “grandfather rule”. Under the first, a 60-percent Filipino-owned firm is deemed a Filipino national, and another firm where it owns 60 percent is deemed the same. The “grandfather rule” is stricter: when a 60-percent Filipino national acquires 60 percent of another firm, it is diluted proportionately. Last year Filipino execs and lawyers of then-robust Lehman Brothers were charged with violating the 1936 Anti-Dummy Law. The case arose from their local subsidiary’s acquisition of a foreclosed parcel of land from a bank. They had inked the takeover under the new Special Purpose Asset Vehicle Law, which rests on the “control test”, formulated in 1993 to implement the 1991 Foreign Investments Act. At any rate, Gonzalez, upholding “control test”, at first had the raps dismissed in Sept. 2008. A month later he declared his ruling final, and trashed the former landowner’s plea for reconsideration. After three weeks, though, while Gonzalez was on leave, an underling revised that “final” verdict and told the NBI to reinvestigate. The bellicose secretary should’ve thrown a fit, but didn’t. In Feb. 2009 Gonzalez junked his own Sept. 2008 and Oct. 2008 final rulings. No new issue or evidence was forwarded to justify it. Foreign businessmen who in the past had relied on “control test” may now be sued under the new Gonzalez dictum.

It wasn’t the justice department’s first turnaround on “control test”. In 2007 a prosecutor used the “grandfather rule” in indicting several Germans and Filipinos for dummying in the Piatco-Fraport airport project. When the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce raised a howl, Malacañang worried about investment pullouts. In Apr. 2008 Gonzalez issued a memo affirming the applicability of “control test”, without explaining the inconsistency.

Gonzalez made another backward flip days ago — in freeing child rapist and ex-congressman Romeo Jalosjos. When the prisons bureau under Gonzalez first tried to release the convict in Dec. 2007, the public fumed, so he had to re-compute the sentence commutation. Gonzalez said then that, on review, the earliest Jalosjos could walk free was May 2009, but that he must stay behind bars till he turns 70 in Aug. 2010. Last week a new prisons chief released Jalosjos in a rush. Facing another public uproar, Gonzalez claimed he had re-computed again that Jalosjos had served his time.

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FOR THE RECORD: The Supreme Court has cleared Judge Rodrigo B. Lorenzo of bribery accusations. In a Dec. 2008 ruling the SC found “no iota of evidence” to back claims in 2002 that Lorenzo, then about to retire, had acted dishonestly in office. Lorenzo now lives quietly in Bacoor, Cavite, with wife Juliana Vela. Juliana says that, as Christians, they have decided to “not get back” at Lorenzo’s detractors. More important for them, she says, is the good name they have passed on to six upright children.

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