Veteran lawmaker Edcel Lagman of Albay stated the acquittal of Juanito Remulla III, son of Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla, was “swift” but the drug case lodged towards former Justice Secretary Leila de Lima appeared “stranded.”
“It is grossly unfortunate that the exoneration of a Remulla scion was swift but liberation of ex-Sen. Leila de Lima is stranded in a dark tunnel of injustice,” Lagman, a lawyer, stated.
Since her detention 5 years in the past, one of many three drug instances towards de Lima has been junked by the court docket as a consequence of lack of advantage.
De Lima has denied the drug costs and maintained that these had been politically motivated as a consequence of her criticism of the Duterte administration’s bloody drug struggle.
A key witnesses in her case had additionally recanted his testimony.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, in the meantime, stated Juanito Remulla’s acquittal didn’t come as a shock.
“From the basic facts of the case as I have gathered from the new reports, I am not surprised that the accused has been acquitted. I believe he was arrested when the package was handed over to him and it was a closed package. And that the law enforcers waited for media representatives to arrive before opening the package in front of the accused,” Pimentel advised GMA News Online.
A Las Piñas court docket cleared the Remulla scion of unlawful possession costs three months after his arrest throughout a managed supply operation by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the NAIA Inter-Agency Drug Interdiction Task Group in Talon Dos, Las Piñas final October 11, 2022.
Authorities had seized a parcel containing suspected kush or high-grade marijuana value P1.3 million through the operation.
Pimentel stated that whereas the speedy decision of the case was commendable, it ought to be accessible to all going through costs.
“I just hope that this example of quick action of the court can also be experienced by others who are involved in the Philippine justice system. This quick action can be conviction or acquittal, [but] what is important is that the delivery of justice be speedy,” Pimentel, a lawyer, stated.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Pimentel added.
Bayan Muna govt vp Carlos Zarate echoed Pimentel and Lagman’s lament that such speedy decision of a case isn’t accessible to different drug suspects.
“Sana all!,” Zarate stated in a separate assertion.
“If only this kind of swift resolution to a highly controversial case involving a scion of influential families like the Remullas will also be applied to the cases of hundreds of political prisoners and thousands more less privileged Filipinos languishing in many detention facilities all over the country, we can honestly say this indeed is a welcome one, an exemplar of how our justice system works,” he added.
However, Zarate lamented that “1000’s, largely poor, killed within the authorities’s bloody ‘struggle towards medication’ weren’t even given the identical likelihood of due course of.”
“While poor families or victims of trumped up charges languish in jail for years, even decades, the young Remulla’s case is not even three months old,” he added.
Justice Secretary Remulla stated he didn’t intervene in his son’s case.
“I did not interfere, in any way, with the process. I trusted the process, and I wish my son further redemption in the future,” Remulla stated in an ambush interview.
“He has to make something out of his life. He had the right to be presumed innocent in the first place,” he added.
Despite as we speak’s acquittal, Remulla’s son is nonetheless going through instances for importation of unlawful medication and violation of the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act that are underneath the Pasay City Prosecutor Office. —LDF/VBL, GMA Integrated News
