Ex-mayor Sanchez may not realize it

Considering the evidence cited by the trial court and the Supreme Court, his claim to innocence is very difficult to believe.

He may not realize it but convicted ex-Calauan, Laguna mayor Antonio Sanchez inadvertently helped in exposing anomalies in the New Bilibid Prisons and the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor).

Sanchez is in the national slammer where he must serve seven long-term sentences for the rape and murder of Eileen Sarmenta, a coed of the University of the Philippines campus in Los Baños, Laguna, and for the murder of Allan Gomez, Sarmenta’s friend who was also from UPLB, back in June 1993.

Justifiably, the judge who convicted Sanchez and his six henchmen referred to the crime as a plot hatched in hell.

The rape and double murder enraged the nation. A local motion picture production company even made a film about a similarly criminally inclined fictional town mayor who was perceived by the public to be Sanchez himself.

Sanchez is also behind bars for his conviction in a separate double-murder case where the judgment was rendered after his conviction in the Sarmenta-Gomez case.

While inside the national penitentiary, Sanchez was caught in possession of prohibited drugs. Although he professes to be a staunch Marian devotee, the public doubts that very much, especially after it was disclosed that Sanchez hid the prohibited drugs inside a statue of the Virgin Mary he kept in his special cell.

As of this writing, Sanchez has been incarcerated for the past 26 years. There are indications, however, that he enjoys special accommodations inside the national penitentiary on account of his wealth.

Sanchez has shown no remorse for the crimes he was convicted for, and repeatedly insists that he is innocent. Considering the evidence cited by the trial court and the Supreme Court, his claim to innocence is very difficult to believe.

How does all that relate to Sanchez’s role in exposing anomalies in the national penitentiary and in the BuCor?

The answer is in the unprecedented notoriety Sanchez earned for himself, and undiminished by the passage of time.

That notoriety is the consequence of the beastly way he and his henchmen consummated the crime they were convicted for; his conviction for double murder in a separate case; his blasphemous attempt to portray himself as a Marian devotee when all indications show that his religious devotion is a charade; his having been caught with drugs while in prison; the special treatment he enjoys while in prison on account of his wealth; his lack of remorse for the crimes that led him to prison; and his continuing influence in the municipality of Calauan, Laguna even while behind bars.

In fact, the ongoing racket in the national penitentiary involving the anomalous release of prisoners for alleged good behavior would not have been exposed to the public had it not been for the announcement made by Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra that Sanchez’s scheduled release in August 2019 was inevitable by operation of law.

That news was enough to trigger a public outcry so intense that Guevarra had to take back what he said and assure everyone that the ex-mayor remains incarcerated.

Sanchez himself was so close to being released that his family was ready to fetch him from prison last month. Fortunately, his impending release was aborted due to mounting public opinion against it.

The aborted release of Sanchez led to a Senate investigation where numerous anomalies in the BuCor were exposed. So far, the investigation has caused a reorganization of the bureau and revealed loopholes in the rules and regulations governing prisoner discharge on good conduct jointly issued by Mar Roxas and Leila de Lima when they were the Local Government secretary and Justice secretary, respectively.

It may be argued that if some other convict was the one scheduled for release last August instead of Sanchez, then those anomalies in the BuCor would never have been revealed to the public.

Thanks to Sanchez’s unprecedented notoriety, those irregularities have been exposed.

This does not mean that Sanchez should be appreciated, or that his sentence should be commuted. It only shows that there are times when the evil that some men do is of such magnitude that it actually guarantees their punishment.