FORMER Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) general manager and police officer Royina Garma is one woman who evokes sympathy and also spite. She received a beating before the quadcomm of the House of Representatives that has been conducting a drawn-out — to my mind, perfectly justified — investigation of the war on drugs and the murders and assassinations alleged to have occurred in the past administration.

All these, the quadcomm points out, are not unrelated to the earlier focus it had on Guo Hua Ping, Cassandra Ong and caboodle!

Garma was questioned at length, and, if truth be told, many of the questions exceeded the permissible parameters of questioning before legislative committees in light of the guaranteed constitutional rights of witnesses testifying before them and established jurisprudence. But the legislators were, quite understandably, on a "hot pursuit" of tantalizing and, at the same time, spine-chilling leads on plots and schemes and bribes and guns-for-hire. She was cited for contempt, ordered detained and then returned to the hot seat for more questions. No stone was left unturned. Her personal life became the subject of inquiry and of innuendo. That is because she, we now know without a doubt, was only a heartbeat away from the Big Man himself and was presumptively privy to all that he ordered done in his ruthless, savage, in fact, war on drugs.

I personally have no doubt that Rodrigo Duterte wanted to rid the country of drug peddlers and traffickers, but his moral failing — together with his legal liabilities — illustrates the classic point of traditional ethics: ex injuria, non oritur jus (from wrong, no right can come). What Garma's affidavit suggests — as do the testimonies of the other witnesses already summoned and questioned by the quadcom — is that Duterte set in place a "rewards system" so that those who scored a hit, which meant one more entry in the obituary, were rewarded according to their "accomplishments" and the extent of their "helpfulness."

I was asked at one radio interview what the evidentiary value of Garma's latest testimony might be. I said that, fundamentally, it was an affidavit — one she affirmed under oath as a witness before the legislature. Testimony like that can — in fact, should — provide the prosecutorial arm of State with something to go by. But the problem with Garma is that she hedges and parries. Asked how she knew the details of what she sounded like "undivine revelations," she answered: "I knew the people involved, and we frequently bantered, and there was general knowledge of these things... "along the same line of testimonial unhelpfulness. And this is what exasperates legislators who repeatedly threatened her with a fresh contempt citation.

I do not know of any rule that allows courts to take judicial notice of testimonies rendered before legislative bodies, even if these be under oath. And an affidavit, unless affirmed in court under oath and subject to the test of cross-examination, remains inadmissible evidence. What would be a real option would be for the prosecutors to secure the transcripts of the quadcom's hearings and then enter them in evidence, accompanied by the requisite testimonial sponsor.

But there is no attenuating the gruesome, brutal and criminal character of the murders and assassinations, nor of the misuse of chains of command as well as "confidential funds," we can presume, if indeed sums were offered under a "reward system." This is why, even if no legislation is passed directly arising from the hearings, it has been helpful to the nation to hear this story of blood, gore and criminal minds, especially because elections loom largely before us, and some, with blood still oozing from their hands, are posturing for another grab at power. Never should criminality again be allowed to don the habiliments of a sanctimonious cause and a war on some evil, real or imagined. And never does the nation deserve to have for its officials those who order citizens killed in blatant violation of every known precept of morality, decency, humanity, let alone law.

rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph

rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph

rannie_aquino@outlook.com