Much as one wants to avoid bringing out details of marital drama out of consideration for the children, the conflict involving the wife of Ronda Vice Mayor Jonah John Ungab and lawyer Jiecel Tiu can’t be hidden under a rock.
The scandal involving two lawyers and an angry wife would have remained a domestic affair – and should have been resolved privately by adults – if not for a very public display of violence.
What’s evident is a baseball bat, and its use by a furious wife to smash the car of a lawyer she perceives as the other woman. A car chase, a collision of vehicles, and actual bodily harm to the single woman are also facts to contend with.
Whether infidelity existed as basis for the assault or not, is a motivation only the parties know for sure.
It is for them to prove or disprove, as statements continue to be issued by the injured lawyer and matron under hospital arrest.
In a society where telenovelas wring out the melodrama out of every Pinoy experience, it still comes as shock to see this kind of behaviour play out in daylight in Cebu City in full public view, involving individuals who are well educated, well off and presumably with better judgment.
We leave it to the prosecutor’s office to evaluate whether the complaint of frustrated murder has enough basis to be filed in a court of law.
The questions of who attacked who first, why it happened and who will be held responsible are best left to the court
There are other aspects that call attention to the handling of the case.
Arrested on the spot by police, the enraged wife remains under “hospital arrest”, presumably because of her pregnant condition, which has come under question. As of latest reports, when policemen visited to get official mug shots of the arrested person for the record, she wouldn’t agree and the law enforcers withdrew. In the inquest proceeding, the prosecutor went out of her way to go to the
hospital to hear the wife’s side. (These are not the usual procedures observed in a crime investigation.)
The man at the center of the drama, Jonah John Ungab, is a lawyer and a vice mayor of Ronda town. This makes him an officer of the court and a public official, two roles that require a higher than usual standard of conduct.
What the public will be watching, aside from the outcome of this complicated relationship, is how justice is served and the law is applied.
In a case involving two lawyers, we should expect the rule of law and their professional comportment to be a sobering factor . Their dignity may be taking a beating right now in the early stage of one side flinging accusations at another but it doesn’t have to be a permanent scar.
The greater weight falls on the vice mayor, who hasn’t said much. But he must speak the truth if there is to be any healing in his family, and possibly, to defuse the criminal case heading for a full blown trial.