Cebu City road rage suspect David Lim Jr. has surrendered to the local police authorities, and criminal charges have been prepared against him before the appropriate court.
Fortunately, it turned out that nobody was killed. Unfortunately, the alleged victim, a nurse who was shot at, was seriously injured.
Since the corresponding criminal charges have been filed against Lim in court, and since the alleged victim is spared the agony of spending time and money ascertaining the identity of the alleged perpetrator of the violence, both parties can confront each other in court.
Whether or not Lim is guilty and, if so, to what extent he must be held legally accountable for the incident, is up to the court to decide. The court’s decision, of course, will depend on the evidence presented by both the prosecution and the defense. Be it a judgment of acquittal or conviction, the court’s decision should not be based on the passionate and, on many occasions, opinionated remarks some of the news media often dissipate to the public in their coverage of high-profile court cases.
The Lim case is one such high-profile case, considering that he comes from a famous family in the city. For this reason, the coverage of his case will be constantly monitored by the local and national news media.
What is unsettling is that even before the criminal cases against Lim were filed in court, an on-line information hub pretending to be a legitimate news site made repeated attempts to link the Lim case with Presidential Assistant Christopher “Bong” Go, the man frequently seen standing beside President Rodrigo Duterte in many public functions, even as early as when Duterte was still campaigning for president last year. Because Go is often seen with Duterte in the news stories reported both in print and in broadcast, it is obvious that Go is very close to the President.
Anyway, the attempt to link Lim with Go arose from news stories stating that Lim sent out “feelers” to the effect that he is willing to surrender to the authorites, and that these “feelers” were sent to the city mayor and other local officials, and to a number of national officials and public personalities including Go. Speculations about the suspected link were further instigated when it was learned through the news media that Go helped in arranging, through the telephone, Lim’s surrender.
The attempt to link the Lim case to Go is unsettling because it insinuates that Lim and perhaps his family have close connections to Go and, ultimately, to President Duterte. It is also disturbing because the notion turned out to be false, because Go only helped his fellow government officials convince a suspect or fugitive avoid creating further complications in an already complicated situation, and to just turn himself over to the authorities and let the law take its regular course.
Actually, there is no law prohibiting what Go did. In fact, the law requires everyone to cooperate with law enforcement authorities.
Subjecting the alleged link between Lim and Go to closer scrutiny indicates that the road rage case in Cebu City is actually a plain and simple news story, bereft of any substantial political color. Simply put, the incident was a traffic altercation which could have been avoided, but which unfortunately ended up violently. Unless it is clearly established that there is, indeed, a link between Lim and Go, and that Lim is using his ties with Go to avoid criminal prosection, the road rage incident in Cebu City must be treated for what it really is—a non-political news story.
The fact that criminal cases have already been lodged against Lim in a court of law discourages speculation that Go has gone out of his way to afford special treatement to Lim.
What happened is an instance of political muckracking against a close associate of President Duterte, done in the guise of legitimate news reportage which, fortunately, exposed itself as a hard sell on-line attempt at discrediting the Duterte administration, undertaken possibly with the support of anti-government groups determined to disgrace the president.
Moreover, there have been occasions in the past when the real news story got drowned by marginal and impertinent distractions, masquerading as news stories or public interest revelations.
Take the example of Senator Leila de Lima. When the Department of Justice was preparing criminal raps against De Lima for her alleged role in the drug trade in the national penitentiary, and after it was revealed that De Lima’s personal driver was her erstwhile lover, De Lima went on the offensive. In a press conference, De Lima decried the charges against her and insisited that they were politically motivated because she had been a staunch critic of President Duterte. De Lima also revived her accusation that Duterte tacitly supports extrajudicial killings in the country through his anti-drug campaign. In the end, it turned out that while De Lima was oozing with tirades against Duterte, she had virtually nothing in her publicity arsenal to refute the charges against her.
Leni Robredo, the purported vice president of the country, provides another example. When Robredo was still a member of the Cabinet of President Duterte, she often made side remarks against the president in public functions and events. Robredo also barely concealed from the public her disapproval and contempt for the president. When Robredo was criticized for her behavior, she suggested that she was being subjected to political persecution as the leader of the political opposition party. Robredo also denounced Duterte for his alleged role in the supposed extrajudicial killings attributed by anti-government groups to the president.
Only a few gullible individuals fell for the story about the alleged link between Lim and Go. That’s an indication that propagandists should not take its readers for fools.