Zero-casualty possible if...

The justice department is to reinvestigate this week the murder of Palawan anti-mining broadcaster Dr. Gerry Ortega. The proceedings finally should instigate the trial of the nine-month-old heinous crime. Politicking has delayed justice far too long.

A new prosecution team has told Ortega’s widow Patria to submit her vaunted new evidence to implicate Palawan ex-governor Joel Reyes. Reportedly these include phone records of Rodolfo “Bumar” Edrad, the confessed organizer of last January’s hit on the radio commentator. With much fanfare Edrad had turned himself in to Reyes’ political foes days after the broad daylight shooting in Puerto Princesa City. Whereupon, he named Reyes as mastermind.

In June an older panel had cleared Reyes for lack of solid evidence, but Patria and the politicos rejected it. Insinuations were that Justice Sec. Leila de Lima, once Reyes’ election lawyer, had caused his exoneration. To dispel such talk de Lima ordered a new probe last month. Came Reyes’ turn to cry injustice.

Absolved earlier with Reyes were his brother Mario, the mayor of their Coron hometown, three provincial employees, and Marinduque Gov. Jose Carrion. They too were ordered by the new panel to give their defense. Edrad alone had incriminated the six. Gunman Marlon Recamata, lookout Dennis Aranas, and confederates Armando Noel and Arwin Arandia did not.

Initially police had linked Reyes because the three suspect-aides were once his subs. Reyes countered that they already were working at the capitol when he became governor, unlike his hiring of two brothers of Ortega, whom he called a friend.

Edrad was once a bodyguard of Carrion, who fired him in 2010 for raping a housemaid. Edrad claimed to be a Scout Ranger discharged for joining the Oakwood Mutiny of 2003, but the Army denied such military service. Though wanted for another murder in Lucena City, “repentant” Edrad has been made a state witness in the Ortega case.

A hundred and twenty-one journalists have been killed since the post-martial law democratic restoration of 1986. Only ten cases have ended in convictions, but none of the masterminds.

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It’s clear from spokesman Midas Marquez’s letter to the editor last Saturday what the answer was to my earlier question: the Supreme Court won’t investigate its own Chief Justice. Be that as it may, Marquez had an odd closing. He saw a “wave of conspiracy” in my writing the article, Malacañang’s impoundment of part of the 2012 budget, and Congress’ summons of judges in the Quezon City land-grabbing case. Wow!

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The Malacañang spokeswoman says casualties are normal in calamities. That may be the painful Philippine reality, but the thinking is defeatist. All governments have the duty to prevent disastrous deaths and injuries. Good leaders in fact target zero-casualty, no matter how daunting the task and the catastrophe. It’s achievable, a senator said, pointing out how a million people were evacuated from the path of Hurricane Irene in New York last August. Many cities in America and Europe aim for zero-casualty even in such daily mishaps as highway speeding and drunk driving.

Studies of disasters bear out the truth: reliable governments can reduce and even remove casualties. One analysis came in the wake of the earthquakes weeks apart in Haiti and Chile in 2010. Haiti’s Magnitude-7 temblor toppled buildings, including the presidential mansion, killing about 220,000 people. In Chile the tremor was 50 times graver at Magnitude-8.8, one of the world’s largest ever recorded, but with less than 300 fatalities. The findings: richer Chile could budget more funds for emergency rescue, relief and rehab. It was stricter in enforcing building laws and standards. Most important was its attitude towards disaster prevention and mitigation. So diligently has Chile studied past quakes to lessen the horrendous aftermath; a third of its deaths were from an uncommon tsunami.

Open societies are quick to correct themselves from calamity slipups. George W. Bush grudgingly but swiftly fired his federal disaster manager, a college pal, for languid reaction to super-Hurricane Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans. No less than four Japanese national officials, not to forget more locals, resigned in the wake of suffering from last March’s earthquake-tsunami and nuclear plant meltdown. Such conduct puts future leaders under pressure to be better prepared.

By contrast, repressive governments hide disasters. One reason the Soviet Union collapsed was its daft attempt to hide from the world the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuke blast. More recently China in 2003 tried to conceal the outbreak in Guangdong of the deadly SARS. Burma, direly in need of outside help, lied about the death of more than 100,000 people in a cyclone in 2008. China again in 2008 tried to keep secret the 68,000 earthquake fatalities in Sichuan.

Some countries never learn. The Philippines is one. Monsoons and typhoons set off floods every year, but Filipinos continue to clog waterways with garbage and ignore urban planning. Ships remain un-seaworthy, routinely drowning passengers in wrecks. Landslides and trash-slides recur because officials let shanties to be built in danger zones. Bikers abound with no helmets, motorists with no headlights at night. Police and firemen remain unequipped and unresponsive.

Publicity substitutes for action. Officials think that just because they’re the new clean kids on the block, they’re better than the dirty old ones in dealing with disaster. The outcome of two typhoons in Luzon showed them to be so wrong. The gusts spared tens of thousands of homes, but not the floods. Officials in five provinces and state engineers ended up blaming each other for the swollen rivers and dam spillovers.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

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