Justice for the poor

SKETCHES

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

It is often said that there are two types of justice in the Philippines: one for the rich, and another for the poor. This is starkly illustrated in the case of Dion Angelo "Gelo" dela Rosa. The 20-year-old third-year college student and altar boy from Caloocan City died of leptospirosis last month after wading for several days in filthy floodwaters up to three feet deep.

He endured the floods in a desperate search for his father Jayson, who had gone missing on July 22. Metro Manila was hit by extreme rainfall and flooding at the time, and Jayson could have had an accident. Caloocan also had one of the highest cases of people killed in Rodrigo Duterte's brutal crackdown on illegal drugs.

The drug-related killings are dramatically down under the new administration. But police were also responsible for Jayson's disappearance from his household. And for reasons that make you wonder if there is justice in this country.

The story is that Jayson was originally apprehended for theft in a convenience store. The store did not press charges, so Jayson should have been freed. Instead, the Caloocan police decided to book Jayson for illegal gambling, ostensibly for playing kara y krus.

The coin-toss betting game is typically played by the extremely poor, involving amounts that constitute not even a drop but only a molecule in the bucket of those who engage in e-sabong, but who are beyond the reach of the law.

Jayson was tossed in jail, and could not afford to post bail.

Clearly, he was not accorded the right to one phone call. No cop bothered to inform his family that he had landed in jail.