EDITORIAL — They’ve flown the coop

Relatives of several cockfight aficionados or sabungeros missing since 2022 should hope that six suspects in the enforced disappearance are still in the country.

On Dec. 11, 2023 and Feb. 1, 2024, Judge Rebecca Guillen-Ubaña of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 40 allowed bail amounting to P3 million each for six security personnel of the Manila Arena, from where six sabungeros from Tanay, Rizal were seen in surveillance video being forced to board a van on the night of Jan. 13, 2022. The six victims have not been seen since then; they were among 34 sabungeros who were reported kidnapped between 2021 and 2022 and remain missing.

Judge Guillen-Ubaña allowed the six defendants to post bail after a witness retracted his statement. On Dec. 20 last year, however, the Court of Appeals reversed the grant of bail, saying that Guillen-Ubaña “gravely abused her discretion” and ignored the “strong evidence” against the suspects.

Based on the CA ruling, the Department of Justice asked the RTC last Jan. 28 to order the re-arrest of Manila Arena security guards Julie Patidongan, Mark Carlo Zabala, Virgilio Bayog, Roberto Matillano Jr., Gleer Cordilla and Johnny Consolacion. It wouldn’t be surprising, however, if the six have already left the country. They must have a wealthy backer, to be able to post bail.

Law enforcement agencies have often lamented how their work is wasted when suspects they have arrested are freed by courts on the flimsiest excuses. In May 2019, Judge Irin Zenaida Buan of the Angeles City RTC Branch 56 also allowed former police colonel Rafael Dumlao III to post bail for the October 2016 gangland-style execution of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo in his car right inside Camp Crame. In 2023, Angeles RTC Branch 60 Judge Eda Dizon acquitted Dumlao.

In July last year, the CA reversed Dizon’s ruling and declared Dumlao as the mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of Jee, whose body was cremated and the ashes flushed down the toilet. A Supreme Court statement said the CA found the RTC proceedings to be “a sham and an apparent mockery of the judicial processes such that Dumlao’s acquittal was a foregone conclusion and in total disregard of the evidence.”

It won’t be surprising if Dumlao as well as the six Manila Arena guards have flown the coop. Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable. Administrators of the judiciary should also review sanctions for judges and justices who are found by higher courts to have “gravely abused discretion” in rendering a ruling.