Torn and frayed in Manila

Stabbing in Taguig: 23 October 2008 update

Please see previous posts for details of this incident.

Powerful arguments can often be marshalled on each side of difficult problems. Yesterday I received two pieces of advice from friends on the question of whether or not to pursue the case; both were eloquent and convincing, although they reached very different conclusions.

First, here is a British friend who has lived in the Philippines for many years.

... everything I see [on Torn and Frayed] reinforces my earlier gut instinct.

There is no gain and possibly some danger in pursuing this case.

Just be grateful that Noel and Tina are alive.

Mr. Benzon is clearly a deeply unhappy and disturbed man.

It is highly unlikely that you will have him put behind bars without an incredible lot of frustrating effort against a bunch of people who want to do nothing -- unless you pay them handsomely, which is like throwing good money after bad.

Even if Mr Benzon goes to clink he will get out one day and he will get drunk and might resume his mindless violence against you and yours or Noel and Tina or the neighbor.

I really think your generosity and admirable sense of civic duty need go no further than helping Noel and Tina find a home in another neighborhood.

As for retribution, have no doubt: Mr. Benzon will meet a deservedly bad end and will die unmourned and unloved, a sad waste of a life.

Be thankful that you had better luck with your parents and your upbringing etc.

I forwarded the letter to a Filipino friend who came back with this analysis.

Let's put the issue of cost aside for the moment.

Having been a police reporter and having had various experiences with the police over the years, I would say that "the system" (of law enforcement in the Philippines) is not completely unreliable. It works "in a certain way", which is to say that you need to know what buttons to push, and that is rarely very obvious.

What has happened is a basic and manifest crime. There is evidence, a witness. The police now know that people are very aware of what has happened. For them to fail to investigate it and prosecute it would be a public dereliction of duty.

Noel and Christina need to provide the necessary paperwork— nothing gets done in this country without reams of paperwork.

Benzon is demonstrably dangerous and needs to be put away. Whatever connections he may have with the local authorities will do him very little good if the spotlight of public attention is focused on him. If the current channels fail to make headway, I can bring this to the attention of people like Ramon Tulfo who just love cases like this, whatever else you may think of him. His Honor the Mayor of Taguig is now aware of this case, which should make Benzon's life a little more uneasy.

Of course, if Benzon can get away in Taguig with stabbing random people for unclear reasons, that tells me that the place where he lives is the kind of situation where, if someone were to ride up to his house on a motorcycle, shoot him in the head, and ride off, very little would be done about it. I am, of course, not suggesting that you or anyone should do this, simply that Benzon is well aware of it.

What I'm saying is, give the system a shot and see if it works. I've seen it work before and I know it can happen. I've also seen the system fail, but for me, it's a 50-50 proposition, which means there is a chance.

Time and emotional energy are up to you. I didn't need the stress and expense of time to fight for Louie Gonzalez, but I did it because I know for a fact that he is innocent. I think if we let Benzon get away with what he has done, at least without a fight, then we have no right to complain about the kind of society we live in. Justice is never automatic, it must be fought for. Injustice fills the unwatched spaces when we choose to look away.

There is always a turning point at which you realize the chances are too slim. The moment you come up against a brick wall, e.g. someone asks you for a lot of money, then you decide whether to drop it or not.

I don't see a brick wall right now. When Major Obong phoned me, he was all effusive and obsequious, evidently Mayor Tinga had had something to say on the matter. I would go with that flow right now.

If you want me to turn up at Taguig Police Station for a chat with Major Obong, I would be quite happy to do so. It would, of course be more effective (and I know this is totally Kafkaesque) for the paperwork to be complete first.

Here are some extracts from my reply to the second letter.

If only my interests were at stake, I would certainly pursue this case. Everything I feel about justice and civic responsibility revolts against walking away from it. I am also keen to see where it may lead and to document every grubby step of the way. As you say, the result may not necessarily be a bad one and I would certainly learn a great deal about how the system here functions “in its own way”. I also agree that in a country like the Philippines we do not have an all powerful state that we must submit to; the state is what we, in our actions, large and small, make of it. Refusing to pursue such a blatant and violent breach of the social contract would be another small step away from the society that we need to build to prevent this sort of thing happening.

Rightly or wrongly, I don’t feel personally threatened by our involvement in this. We are too far removed from Benzon and his world to allow him much opportunity of taking revenge on us, even if he and his family had the resources, which I doubt.

Noel’s situation is very different and I am not sure that his and his family’s interests would be served by his involvement in what is certain to be a long drawn out affair. If we pursue it, he will not be able to draw a line under this horrible incident and to move on; leaving aside his vulnerability to some sort of attack from Benzon, the case is something he will have to carry with him for many months, or even years. I am concerned about his wife in particular, since she is a simple provincial soul, quite overwhelmed by the city even before any of this happened.

My main concern with pursuing the case is whether we would be exposing Noel and his family to some sort of violent response from Benzon. Even if Noel hides himself in the great wen of Manila, Benzon knows he works for [Frayed’s company] and of course Noel will maintain contacts with his old neighbourhood. He won’t be that hard to find. Even if an attack never comes, Noel will carry an anxious burden as he passes every shadow. I would feel so awful if he were to bear the cost of our search for social justice.

On the other hand, I am so far from the world where this took place that it is quite possible I am overestimating Benzon’s capacity to react in any way. Even if he has barangay connections that have rendered him an “untouchable” in his own milieu, in the broader scheme of things, the odds are stacked against him. It is also true, that, since he has not demonstrated any capacity for rational thought, he may pursue Noel even if we withdraw from the case, though I suspect that if Noel leaves the neighbourhood that is not very likely.

We will mull over the arguments in your very good letter over the next few days and discuss them with Noel and Tina. I have always said that the decision has to be based on what they want, even though Noel is happy to leave it up to me.

Stabbing in Taguig: 21 October 2008 update

Please see previous posts for details of this incident.

I don’t know which is worse, Taguig police force or Makati Med.

However, since it is just possible that the Taguig police might eventually come through for us and at least they haven’t cost me nearly $5,000 for inferior and probably unnecessary procedures, I’ll give the award to Makati Med.

Attempted killer walking free

Nestor Benzon, the man who tried to kill an innocent stranger for no reason, is back in his street. He has not actually moved back into his home, since that might be a bit brazen, even for him, but he is in the neighorhood.

Not only is Benzon back, he or his allies are continuing a campaign of harassment against Benzon’s next-door neighbor, Cristina, whose son witnessed the attack. This poor woman is frightened to leave her house and at midnight every night a hail of rocks lands on her roof, just to remind her that that they are there.

The Good Mayor

Fortunately for us, a friend went to school with Mayor Tinga of Taguig and he kindly wrote to the mayor explaining the case and the police inaction. Mayor Tinga has not done anything to give us preferential treatment, but he has prodded the police and this has been effective, for which we are extremely grateful.

Taguig Police

Noel has been phoning the police almost every day and has been given the run around. However, now that the mayor has got involved they have smartened up their act a little. Frayed took Noel to the station today and at last, he was able to give his statement. We also learned that what we were told on our first visit, that unless a statement is taken within 24 hours the suspect can go free, was not correct. Apparently it is 5 days. Noel was discharged four days after the attack and if we had known he could have given a statement within that time frame. But of course that might have meant the police doing their job, which they have seemed conspicuously reluctant to do.
It turned out that chief of police who took Noel’s statement actually lives on the street where the incident took place. He knows Nestor Benzon’s son, who, gulp, wants to become a policeman. He has talked to the son since stabbing. The son’s line is apparently “he didn’t do it” which is obviously why Benzon is doing his best to intimidate anyone who might say something to the contrary.

The fact that the cop investigating the case is local doesn’t reassure me at all. In fact we seem further than ever from the idea of the police as a neutral arbiter and enforcer of society’s laws and more and more enmeshed in the complex network of power relations of a poor Manila neighbourhood. The cop even said to Frayed that he quite understood why the sons would want to protect the father.

Anyway, we have at least got the statement made, which is something. The cop also gave the Cristina (who came to the station) his card and he has “guaranteed” her safety. The next step will be the medical certificate.

The world’s most useless medical establishment: Makati Med

When a hospital receives patients who have been victims of a violent attack they are supposed to explain to them before discharging them that they will need a medical certificate and tell them how to get hold of it. Did Makati do this? Do you need to ask?

In fact, Makati Med would rather not go to the trouble of producing the certificate themselves. Noel had to do that. When he returned to the hospital to try to get the certificate, he had to go to one office to get the form and then to try to chase down doctors all over the hospital to get them to sign. Eventually, frustrated and tired (this was still a few days after being discharged) he gave up. Since 16 October, the preparation of this document has been the responsibility of the medical records department. As usual, Frayed has had to intervene and to phone the records office. They say they will give it to us by 24 October. Way to go Makati Med.

Meanwhile Cristina and her son go to bed with rocks crashing on their roof because these useless idiots cannot produce a one page piece of paper. It’s just pathetic.

Should we pursue the case?

I asked this question a few days ago and thanks to those of you who answered. At the time of writing, the score is: 1 yes, 2 don’t bother, 2 hire some thugs.

However, since I wrote that last post, matters have taken on a life of their own. With Benzon and his allies strutting around and making life hell for Cristina we seem to have no choice. Both Noel and the mother of the witness, the people most directly involved, seem to believe that pursuing the legal route is the only way forward.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (1926-2008)

Singaporean oppositionist J.B. Jeyaretnam (JBJ), who died on 30 September, was an existential 20th century hero.

Courage comes in many forms, and JBJ’s willingness to stand almost alone against overwhelming odds, his dogged persistence, and his adherence to his principles drew grudging admiration even from his detractors.

When I arrived in Singapore in 1985, JBJ was one of only two opposition MPs in the world’s smallest totalitarian state, having been elected MP for Anson in 1981. His Workers’ Party was the only dissenting voice against the hegemonic People’s Action Party of his nemesis Lee Kuan Yew. Lee’s response to a figure who would in other polities be regarded as an irritating gnat was overwhelming.

By the time I left in 1989 JBJ had been jailed and fined enough to disqualify him from standing for election and disbarred from practising law, although that decision was overturned by a devastating judgement of the UK Privy Council (which by a curious post-colonial quirk was, even in the 1980s, the final court of appeal in Singapore). Here is a quote from the judgement:

Their Lordships have to record their deep disquiet that by a series of misjudgements, the appellant and his co-accused Wong, have suffered a grievous injustice. They have been fined, imprisoned and publicly disgraced for offences of which they are not guilty. The appellant, in addition, has been deprived of his seat in Parliament and disqualified for a year from practising his profession. Their Lordships order restores him to the roll of advocates and solicitors of the Supreme Court of Singapore

Needless to say, that was the end of the Privy Council’s role in Singapore judiciary. Once appeals to the Privy Council had been abolished, Lee continued his campaign of persecution. Abusing the laws of libel and taking advantage of a complaisant domestic judiciary, he hounded Jeyaretnam to bankruptcy.

In all, Mr Jeyaretnam calculated that over the years he paid out more than S$1.6m (more than $900,000) in damages and costs, sometimes for remarks that in many democracies would not lead to libel actions but be regarded as part of the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary politics. (Economist obituary)

At times Lee Kuan Yew seemed physically disgusted by Jeyaretnam:

“I think I am slowly convincing my colleagues that the only way to get a skunk is to skin him and nail his skin”.

Asked by Jeyaretnam whether he hated him and thought he should be destroyed, Lee replied “you have to be debunked, exposed as a charlatan, as basically dishonest, as immoral and utterly unscrupulous, that you make any allegation against anyone so long as you are protected [by parliamentary privilege] but the moment you bar the consequences you flinch and you cringe, which is shameful”.

Even Jeyaretnam’s death couldn’t stop the Lees from aiming one more kick. Here is part of the, ahem, letter of condolence from LKY’s son, the current prime minister of Singapore, to JBJ’s sons Kenneth and Philip:

I was sad to learn that your father, Mr Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, has passed away…[Jeyaretnam] and the PAP never saw eye to eye on any major political issue and he sought by all means to demolish the PAP and our system of government. Unfortunately, this helped neither to build up a constructive opposition nor our Parliamentary tradition. Nevertheless, one had to respect Mr JB Jeyaretnam’s dogged tenacity to be active in politics at his age.

However, our differences were not personal.

Of course not.

JBJ had his eccentric side, with his Victorian sideburns and rather theatrically aggressive stance, but what an important function he served. It is hard for anyone unfamiliar with the Singaporean “policeman in the head” to appreciate just what a splendid advertisement for brainwashing the island's economic and social miracle is. I believe a lot of JBJ’s criticisms of Lee’s elitism were justified, but that’s really beside the point. His most important contribution was to get up every day to demonstrate that there can be an alternative.

To simply accept the PAP world view uncritically as many Singaporeans do is to substitute your humanity for something closer to the sensibility of an unthinking automaton. Through his ceaseless and thankless Sisyphean struggle, J. B. Jeyaretnam taught his fellow Singaporeans what it is to be a man.

Stabbing in Taguig: 18 October 2008 update

Please see the previous post for details of this incident.

Noel’s recovery from his stab wounds continued this week and he has now taken off all his dressings, which is great news. Otherwise there is little progress to report.

Witness intimidation

I mentioned in my last post that the relatives of the attacker had been seen prowling the neighbourhood. Noel and Tina’s friend lives next door to him and they have decided they have to move out. Another neighbour who witnessed the attack has had stones thrown onto his roof at midnight every night, every one saying “keep quiet, or else”.

Court case

“Pro-negative” is the only word I can think of to describe the Taguig police. Although they have had Tina’s report for 10 days they have done nothing. After initially saying they would come to us to interview Noel, they now say they need his hospital certificate before they will do this (see below). Yet that can’t be right since they took Tina’s statement last week without a certificate. We will just have to keep at them to do something, which will probably mean Frayed visiting the station next week with Noel to get them to take his statement.

More apathy and gouging from Makati Med

There seem to be two types of hospital certificate: one simply says what happened and costs only 100 pesos, even from Makati Med. However, now it has taken its $4,800 from me, the hospital is in no rush to provide this simple document. Noel has been phoning every day and being given the run around. We will follow up next week and again nothing will probably get done until Frayed gets involved.

The other type of certificate is a “medico-legal” certificate that costs P3,500 per patient. Although this seems like more daylight robbery from Makati Med, I am willing to pay it to get things moving. However, according to Noel, we can wait until the court requests it and then we don’t have to pay, so that is what we are doing. I don’t know whether that is the right approach.

Should we be pursuing the case at all?

I have been wondering whether it is even worth going ahead with this. The decision has to be Noel’s since it is his family that was attacked and that would have to bear any consequences. We have told Noel that we will support him in whatever he decides. However, I know that he looks to me for guidance and is likely to follow whatever I suggest, so against my wishes I feel drawn into this complicated moral problem.

My initial feeling was that we owe it to the rest of society to put this guy away. Since he has already attacked and nearly killed Noel and Tina for no reason, it seems quite possible that he will do so again. In fact if he gets away with it this time, he will probably feel emboldened and may commit even worse acts of violence.

However, now I realize how little support we are going to get from the so-called criminal justice system, I am wondering what the long-term implications of all this may be for Noel and his family. Ok, Manila is a big city but you can’t disappear that easily. And if they come who will be there to protect him?

I just don’t know what to do. However, since I have said all along that it must be Noel’s decision and he seems willing and even keen to pursue justice, elusive though it is, I guess we will continue battering at the door of Taguig police station for a while yet.

Stabbing in Taguig

Last Sunday a neighbour of our driver, Noel, tried to kill him with a filed down screwdriver.

Noel and his wife Tina had just popped into a friend’s place to check on their kids. They were walking back to their motorcycle when their friend’s next-door neighbour, a notorious and violent drunk, approached them. Apparently without provocation or warning he began stabbing both of them. Tina received a minor wound and rolled away from the attacker. Noel fought back but was still stabbed four times; the first from the back and the others in the front. The most severe wound, 5 cm deep, actually “touched’ his heart according to the doctors. His left lung was punctured.

Tina managed to separate the two men and, curiously, the attacker then seems to have left the scene, leaving Noel pouring blood and his weapon (which is now with the police). They piled into a tricycle which took them to the local “hospital”. This establishment said it could not treat them because it didn’t have an X-ray machine—what kind of hospital does not have an X-ray machine?—and advised them to go to one of the private hospitals in the city.

An ambulance began driving them to Medical City in Ortigas, but Noel figured it would be better to go to Makati Med, presumably because it is nearer to where we live. Unfortunately, the ambulance driver did not know where Makati Med was—what kind of an ambulance driver does not know that?—so, in between passing out from the pain of his stab wounds, Noel had to direct him. At one point in his frustration he even said he would even drive himself.

We received a call from a distraught Tina at about 7 in the evening and rushed down to the accident and emergency ward at Makati Med.

It’s been rather a grim week since then, but thankfully Noel and Tina are doing quite well. Tina was discharged last Tuesday and Noel on Thursday. They and their two kids are staying with us since the psycho who committed this crime returns to the neighbourhood intermittently. Until we can get him locked up, which I am determined to do, they will either remain with us or we will help them find them somewhere else to live.

Accident and emergency at Makati Med

An accident and emergency ward in an inner-city hospital is not designed to display the most positive aspects of a society. In fact it is the epicentre of urban stress (in the UK, for example, the ward is usually full of abusive drunks). Last Sunday, in addition to stab victims Noel and Tina, a young man was a carried in by two friends covered in blood from 3 gunshot wounds, one in the neck.

I’d like to be able to say we saw hardworking and dedicated professionals delivering high-quality care under difficult circumstances, but in truth I didn’t find the place too encouraging. Although the care that Noel and Tina received seemed reasonable, the atmosphere of the ward was extremely casual, with medical and auxiliary staff wandering around texting, joking, and chatting. In fact it was something like a bus station with blood.

Despite the clear sign on the door limiting guests to one per patient, there was no attempt to enforce this rule, either within the preliminary area or, incredibly, in the operating area, where visitors milled aimlessly about, getting in the way of medical staff and spreading their germs over the patients.

In addition to the general lassitude of the staff, there was also an indefinable feeling of sleaziness about the place. From the word go, I felt that patients were regarded as a lucrative source of income rather than as lives to be saved. OK, private medical care is a business, but as a foreign employer willing to foot the bill for his employee I could almost feel the rubbing of hands as soon as I entered the swing doors. Initially, I wondered whether I was being paranoid, but that was before I received the bill (see below).

Taguig police station

The violent attack on Noel and Tina happened in front of several witnesses. The attacker was well known to the police, having already accumulated a thick police blotter. The incident was even written up in a local paper. Yet here in the do-it-yourself Philippine state nobody is going to get off their fat asses unless prodded from above.

Frayed and Tina visited the nearest police station the day she was discharged. Their presence was clearly an inconvenience to the first policeman they met, who claimed that unless Noel was actually dead there was nothing they could do. Fortunately, they persevered and the next cop they spoke to was prepared to take Tina’s statement and was quite helpful. Of course this was after they told him that they had contacts who knew the Taguig mayor.

By this stage, the attacker was back in the neighbourhood (he had left for 24 hours after the attack) and could easily have been picked up. Alas, Manila’s finest could not move until they had additional corroborating evidence from Noel, who was still seriously ill in hospital. Nor is a sight of his ghastly wounds enough; they need a certificate from the hospital that he was indeed nearly stabbed to death.

We can do all that (Noel’s testimony and the hospital certificate), but guess what? The attacker has now disappeared again, no doubt because he found out from the station that a case was being filed against him. The police have told us that, once there is a warrant for his arrest, the attacker can be arrested anywhere in the country. That sounds great, but since the local police station has shown no interest in pursuing a criminal in Taguig, what can we expect from policemen in Iloilo, or Laoag, or anywhere else in this vast disorganized and uncomputerized country of 90 million people? Our only hope seems to be that he will be stupid enough to return, which actually seems a reasonable possibility.

Makati Med hospital bill

The realization that the attack on Noel and Tina was going to be an expensive affair dawned when Tina was discharged at a cost of P22,237.75 ($480). Unlike Noel’s, her wounds had been superficial. In fact beyond some cleaning up, a few short consultations, and two nights in a shared hospital room with Noel (cost P2,400 per person per night) she had received almost no treatment and few drugs.

I was therefore primed for a shock when we went to discharge Noel and I got it.

Noel received no complex surgery. He was stitched up in the accident and emergency room and after that he received numerous tests, including an endoscopy, CT scan, and a large number of X-rays.

Although the bill was nickel and dimed to the max (alcohol swab = P1.96), the lengthy computer printout is not presented in a way to aid understanding, which may or may not be the intent.

Nevertheless, here is the summary:

Room and board: 9,800
Pulmonary lab dept: 3,888
Pharmacy: 25,250
Laboratory: 5,300
Operating room: 27,395 (I think this is for the endoscopy)
CSS: 3,181.53 (your guess is as good as mine)
Radiology department: 8,035
CVDL: 6,590 (see above)
Emergency department: 13,374.13
Switchboard section: 65

Total: 122,738.16

We had just absorbed this when the accountant told us sweetly that this did not include the doctors’ fees, these could be picked up from the cashier.

The doctors, only one of whom we met (Dr Duran), were as follows.

Dr Gabriel: 2,200
Dr Duran: 20,000
Dr Cedeno: 25,000
Dr Sanchez: 3,500
Dr Gonda: 4,000
Dr Diaz: 7,500
Dr Dy: 4,500
Dr Tuazon: 16,800

Total: P83,500

The total bill for Noel’s treatment was P206,238.16 ($4,325), bringing the bill for Noel and Tina’s stay to P228,475.91 ($4,805).

In case you are wondering about insurance, I initially thought that Noel was insured with PhilHealth through Frayed’s company. In fact although the office had given Noel the forms he had not yet filled them in. So it goes.

Sadly for all of us, this story is not over by a long shot. I’ll add updates when there is something to report.