EDITORIAL - Wang-wang behavior

He’s praying for the public’s “patience and understanding,” Joseph Russell Ingco declared in a statement yesterday. If he had patience and understanding, Ingco wouldn’t find himself in the trouble he is in. Until early last night, police were still hunting down Ingco, who apparently was the person recorded on video grabbing and dragging along a traffic enforcer as he drove away in a blue Maserati Ghibli.

Jurve Adriatico, traffic enforcer of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, was punched in the face as he was dragged alongside the Maserati for several meters before Ingco let go. Adriatico suffered a broken nose from the beating.

Since there are reportedly only two blue Maserati Ghiblis sold in this country, it didn’t take long to locate the luxury vehicle, even with a cloth cover, parked in the garage of a condominium building in Quezon City. Ingco was nowhere to be found, but promised in his statement that he would surface.

He’s not the first owner of a luxury vehicle to subject a traffic enforcer to abuse. In August 2012, MMDA traffic constable Saturnino Fabros accosted Philip Morris executive Robert Blair Carabuena for beating a red light while driving a green Volvo in Quezon City. Carabuena, with his brother beside him, was shown on video berating Fabros and slapping him around.

Ingco won’t be the last to think that anyone wealthy enough to afford an expensive car has a license to break traffic rules, until authorities show that such behavior does not go unpunished in this country. If the MMDA wants to serve the public well, it should support its enforcers and discourage them from accepting out-of-court settlements for being subjected to abuse.

Elsewhere in the world, even celebrities and prominent government officials end up behind bars, pay fines and apologize publicly for such arrogant, abusive behavior. The same thing must be done in the Philippines if we want the rule of law to prevail. Punishment befitting the crime must be rendered, even if the suspect is a VIP who owns a Maserati.

This is not a simple case of traffic violation; Adriatico is a victim of physical injuries and assault on a person in authority. He is a victim of the wang-wang mentality, taken to a violent extreme. There is supposed to be no place for this in the daang matuwid administration.