Ex-AFP Inspector-General Sees Whitewash in
Court Martial vs General
Retired Navy Captain
Danilo Vizmanos, formerly with the AFP Office of the Inspector General, is
not convinced the court martial proceedings recently initiated against
Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia would result in a fair rendering of justice. Court
martial proceedings can actually be used to perpetrate a whitewash in
military scandals, he says.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
The court martial
proceedings initiated last week against Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia, former
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) comptroller, are not assurance that
justice will be done in his case, according to retired Navy Captain Danilo
Vizmanos former AFP Inspector-General.
Garcia presently
stands accused of amassing some P143 million ($2.55 million based on a
$1:P56 exchange rate) in ill-gotten wealth. The difference between his
income in the last 10 years and his total expenses for the same period
amounts to only P2.57 million.
President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, apparently feeling the impact of public pressure to act
against military corruption, had called for court martial proceedings
against Garcia.
But the Garcia
corruption case has also triggered a constitutional crisis, with the
Sandiganbayan (anti-graft court) split over whether to continue
administrative charges against the former AFP comptroller and the AFP
insisting on its court martial jurisdiction.
Questions have been
raised on whether the supremacy of civilian courts is now being undermined
again by the AFP just like what happened under martial law in the 1970s.
What happens in a court martial?
Taking off from the
Garcia case, Vizmanos said: “There should first be an investigation, it
could be by the inspector-general or the provost marshall, depending on
the nature of the case. In the case of Garcia, it may be the
inspector-general. That is to find out whether there is indeed something
fishy going on – to unearth the facts of the case, so it’s something like
a fact-finding operation.”
If there is an
established basis, the inspector-general would recommend to the AFP chief
of staff that a pre-trial investigation be conducted. The chief of staff
would then appoint a pre-trial investigator; usually any officer could
serve as pre-trial investigator. “But in big cases like the Garcia
scandal,” he said, “the investigators would have to come from the Judge
Advocate General’s Office (JAGO).”
The pre-trial
investigator, who serves as the counterpart of the civil court’s fiscal,
will look into the case to see if there are reasonable grounds for filing
a case. If warranted, the pre-trial investigator would prepare a charge
sheet.
The charge sheet
would then be referred to the JAGO and sent to the chief of staff or any
concerned officer. The concerned officer would become a convening
authority and issue orders for court martial.
There are three kinds
of court martial: general court martial, special court martial, and
summary court martial. The summary court martial, the lowest level, has
only three members; while in the special court martial there are five
members. The general court martial has seven members.
The court martial
officers, according to Vizmanos, should be equal in rank to the accused,
or higher. “In the Garcia case it is rather difficult for them,
considering Garcia’s rank: the court martial officers to try him should be
major generals or higher.”
Appointment of court martial officers
“Now, it is in the
appointment of court martial officers that you can sense whether or not
there will be any justice done,” Vizmanos reveals. “You can see in this
where the sympathies of the superior officers lie: whether they are in
favor of the prosecution or the defense.”
This can be figured
out, Vizmanos said, from the composition of the officers appointed to the
court martial. “Who is appointed trial judge advocate (the counterpart of
the civil court’s prosecutor), who is appointed defense counsel – because
they are all appointed by just one authority, the convening authority.”
In the Garcia case,
Vizmanos pointed out, “the convening authority is the chief of staff.”
“If the convening
authority is biased toward the defense, he would appoint a former
classmate or schoolmate, or even someone who is involved in the case,”
Vizmanos said. “So if the chief of staff is also involved, he could
weaken the case by appointing a mediocre trial judge advocate and putting
the more competent ones in the defense side. They could even get civilian
lawyers to help the defense.”
“In the Garcia case,
the office of the chief of staff is apparently also involved,” Vizmanos
said, “and yet it is the convening authority for the court martial. So it
is possible that the court martial proceedings would continue, but the
proceedings may be confined to only one person.”
Lawyer Roel Pulido,
who presently handles the case of some 300 soldiers who staged an armed
protest action in Makati City last year against military corruption and
atrocities against the civilian populace, agrees with Vizmanos on the
argument that court martial would not necessarily bring justice. “The
court martial may even be used to exonerate accused officers favored by
the higher-ups or prevent the entire truth from coming out,” he told
Bulatlat in an interview.
Pulido also said that
his clients have not told him of any single case in which top-ranking
officials were convicted in court martial proceedings.
In a court martial,
Vizmanos said, the whole truth will not necessarily come out. “It could be
only a partial truth that would come out of the proceedings,” he pointed
out. “The court martial can be a means of covering up the whole mess,
sacrificing one person and keeping others off the hook.” Bulatlat
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