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Manila. A former Philippine provincial governor serving a 12-year sentence for homicide slipped out of jail last week — because he claimed that he had a toothache and wanted to go the dentist.

The incident has put the spotlight on concerns that wealthy prisoners enjoy VIP treatment.

Prisoner Antonio Leviste was nabbed in Manila's financial district on Wednesday night after the authorities received a tip-off that the 71-year-old had sneaked out of the low-security wing at New Bilibid national penitentiary in the capital.

Sitting in the passenger seat of a luxury sports utility vehicle and wearing a baseball cap, Leviste was filmed by a TV news crew sheepishly telling a reporter that he was suffering from a toothache and had a dental appointment.

Leviste's unauthorized furlough left the prison authorities red-faced, and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima vowing that 'heads will roll'.

She told reporters on Thursday that an investigation would probe the “open secret” of special treatment being given to some inmates. “We've been hearing rumors that things like this are happening. It's sort of an open secret,” she said.

Just last month, the prison authorities were under fire for a “jail party” scandal involving a detainee facing charges over a road-rage killing.

Photographs posted on the Internet allegedly showed the prisoner, who is from a wealthy family, living it up with women and liquor inside his cell in a jail in the capital's Quezon City.

Exactly how Leviste — who was convicted in 2009 of shooting an assistant four times in the head after an argument — went absent without official leave is not clear. But it was hardly The Great Escape.

He was among 400 hundred inmates, many of them elderly, granted so-called “living out” privileges in New Bilibid. Although he was confined to the prison's sprawling 550-hectare compound, he had considerable freedom.

De Lima described Leviste's trip as the “tip of the iceberg,” with other wealthy or powerful prisoners suspected of slipping out of jail for some free time.

Some 22,000 inmates — or about a fifth of the country's prisoner population — are incarcerated at New Bilibid.

“The guards prefer to leave the running of the prison to the inmates,” said Maria Diokno, who works for the Free Legal Assistance Group and is a frequent visitor there. “They are poorly trained and paid, which breeds corruption.”

Another person who has visited the prison said: “A lot of New Bilibid looks like a Filipino village, with sari-sari [mom and pop] stores and small eateries. There are huts and cells, and high-society prisoners have private quarters.”

Several years ago, there was a national furore after it was found that former congressman Romeo Jalosjos, who was serving a life sentence in 1997 for raping an 11-year-old girl, was living in splendor in New Bilibid's maximum-security wing.

His special quarters reportedly had a queen-sized bed, private bathroom and a 42-inch flat-screen television set.

He was freed in 2009 by a presidential pardon during the previous administration.

Yet conditions for most prisoners are overcrowded, squalid and a far cry from the cheery image presented by the now world-famous “Michael Jackson” dancing prisoners in Cebu City's jail seen in videos.

President Benigno Aquino has made reforming the overstretched judicial system a legacy mission of his administration - and in particular speeding the wheels of justice.

Low-income remand prisoners are often detained for years before their cases are heard.

But the penal system gets far less attention. As Diokno said: “Prison officials themselves say reforms are needed.”


Reprinted courtesy of Straits Times Indonesia. To subscribe to Straits Times Indonesia and/or the Jakarta Globe call 021 2553 5055