Fool’s errand

The huge high-level delegation led by Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida — made up of a full contingent from the Department of Justice and the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime — to the Czech Republic on what was billed as a mission to retrieve fugitive former congressman Zaldy Co has nothing to show for it.

After days on the ground in Prague, the trip has produced exactly nothing. In a remarkable press briefing from the Czech capital, Vida offered what amounted to bureaucratic evasion.

He confirmed that the Interpol Red Notice application was filed last November, five months ago, yet “there is still no Red Notice because some submissions are still lacking.”

Also, the Justice chief could not say with certainty if Co was still in Europe and could not confirm how long Czech authorities supposedly detained the congressman, or even whether he was still in their custody.

Nada, zilch. The expensive mission was worthless except for the zarzuela that it sought to perpetrate.

Every substantive question was met with the same refrain: more information would come later.

The secretary kept harping on a meeting with his Czech counterpart to “clarify and validate” information his team had spent days studying.

The meeting will not be about retrieving Co, but about knowing when definitive confirmation will arrive and learning the “protocols to be followed” and the “process for possibly bringing him back.”

Such an undertaking should have been left to the Philippine embassy personnel, without incurring costs for tickets and accommodations for an .

Until then, the public is asked to accept that the mission is proceeding splendidly. “We will not come home empty-handed,” Vida assured reporters, even as he admitted he had no idea where the fugitive actually was.

A Red Notice, the basic international tool for locating and arresting a wanted person, remains incomplete half a year after it was filed. Yet, the government saw fit to fly an entire entourage across continents to chase rumors.

The secretary himself acknowledged that the Czech authorities do not issue Red Notices, as the authority lies with the International Criminal Police Organization’s (Interpol) central bureau in Lyon, France.

The trip, in other words, cannot accelerate the process he claims is the government’s top priority.

Still, it is hoping to generate headlines. Vida’s language is a continuation of the Palace’s ambiguity to mislead the public.

He would not call the reported detention an “arrest,’’ only that, at some point, Co was “under Czech authorities’ jurisdiction for violating immigration laws.”

Concerns about the mission’s cost and duration were dismissed by invoking his “responsibilities in Manila” and, remarkably, prayers to the high heavens.

Then Vida wailed that he had missed two days of his medication, adding that he had prayed to the Santo Niño for guidance and for the mission’s success.

“This is not easy,” he said. “When we can no longer do it alone, we ask for help from the Lord.”

One might suggest that a competent justice department head would have asked for complete paperwork before boarding the plane.

Filipinos have every right to be exasperated. Fugitive lawmakers have become a recurring embarrassment, using the excuse of the inability to secure even basic international cooperation.

The delegation now returns, by the secretary’s own admission, with little more than “workable intel” and a promise of further study. Vida merely confirmed the trip was an embarrassing and expensive junket.

Taxpayer money has been spent on flights, hotels, and per diems for officials who, by all appearances, arrived unprepared to do the one thing they were sent to do: bring Co home.

Mission Prague must be examined to find out whether the real obstacle was the Czech bureaucracy, Interpol procedure, or simple incompetence at home.