Fast is not the same as fair

A certain senator, known to be solidly with the Vice President and about as far from Malacañang’s good graces as one can get, is in the express lane of justice. Or what passes for it, Nosy Tarsee learned.

The chief graft-buster is beaming. The charges were filed barely three months ago, and seven witnesses were paraded in two months. The prosecution rested on 8 October.

Now the official muses that a verdict could come in under a year, “breaking records,” provided the anti-graft court “really does its job.”

Read that last bit again.

Speed is not a sin. The public has waited long enough. The Priority Development Assistance Fund, or pork barrel, and the Fertilizer Fund scam dragged on for some 15 years while the accused aged, retired, or ran for higher office.

But swift is not the same as just. A prosecutor who boasts about the stopwatch before the defense has even opened its mouth is telling us what he values.

Consider the explanation or excuse. The case moves fast because it is “simple.” Many facts were admitted, and the only question left is “purely legal.”

Then there is that curious phrase, “If the Sandiganbayan will really do its job.” Since when is a court’s job measured against the prosecution’s timetable?

Judges are not stenographers for somebody else’s calendar, and a gentle nudge from the nation’s top prosecutor, delivered on the eve of the defense’s turn, hardly sounds gentle.

Voters may fairly ask where this sprint was when other cases — the bigger, messier and better-known ones that cost them sleep — crawled through the system. If the answer is “those were more complicated,” that serves as a templated explanation.

The defense begins presenting its evidence on 19 October. Until the court speaks, he remains an accused, not a convict — and the public should remember that no matter how loudly the administration’s clock ticks.