Wounded bulls very dangerous / Kuratong Baleleng r

As any torero worth his gleaming coat-of-arms will tell you, the most dangerous bull is a wounded bull. Of course, we in so-called civil society knew for years that our Armed Forces of the Philippines left much to be desired while our Philippine National Police was shot through with corruption and ineptitude. But we suffered that and swallowed hard. It wasn’t difficult at all to divine they were just mirrors of our socio-political system which had become a sinkhole of graft and wrongdoing, as witness our Congress, particularly our Senate today. Our judiciary too.

It had to take a woman, a Chinese-Filipino at that and super-spy Mary Ong alias Rosebud with a calm and modulated voice, to rain fire and brimstone on the Philippine National Police in 1998 then under the stewardship of General Panfilo Lacson, now an embattled senator of the realm. Mary Ong said – to everybody’s shock and stupefaction – that Camp Crame then had become the headquarters of a nationwide drug traffic involving top PNP officers and their Chinese cohorts with Lacson wielding the baton. She knew, Rosebud did, because she was an undercover agent and was in thick of it.

Just to complete the picture, on the other side of the fence, we have the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) wrapped around the flagpole on charges some of its ranking field officers had played footsie with the Abu Sayyaf. A cornered Abu Sayyaf contingent, led by the notorious Abu Sabaya last June 2 was surrounded by a vastly superior military force. But the bandits still managed to escape from a hospital in Lamitan – an impossible feat. Accusers including Fr. Cirilo Nacorda charged there was a collusion, a lot of money changed hands, and the Abu Sayyaf escaped "free as a bird" to hold the Philippine republic hostage anew.

So, as in the Spanish corrida, the PNP and the AFP were dealt the estocada, that gleaming sword thrust in the afternoon intended to slay the bull. If not slay him, send the bull staggering to the wall, there to seek the shadows and die.

There is a bigger corrida today, a fight for the hearts and minds of the Filipino people. The protagonists are the government and its institutions on one side and civil society on the other. It is evident the government and its agencies are badly losing this war. Instead of drawing murderous counterfire, Mary Ong has the sympathy of the public at large who believe her story. PNP superintendents Romeo Acop and John Campos, particularly the latter, are now the objects of derision and contempt not just for scurrilously denying Rosebud’s charges about their top complicity in the drug trade.

But Campos broke new ground for uncouth and boorish behavior. A PMA graduate an "officer and a gentleman"? Nobody believed Campos when he said he never lived with Mary Ong for five years, as she claims. When on top of that, Campos said he merely "used her" (in bed, of course) and virtually called her a slut and a whored, he broke the record for nauseating vulgarity. Shame on you, Mistah.

The big loser in all this, of course, is Sen. Panfilo Lacson. He can never rid himself of his killer-drug lord image. The bigger loser is our republican democracy. Sporting two big, black eyes for partisan skullduggery is the Senate.

When our democracy and institutions are on the blink, like the still working tail-lights of a dilapidated car crushed by an accident, we all have reasons to be sorry. When all presidential press secretary Roberto Tiglao can say is that Malacañang continues to trust the PNP’s top generals and by the same token the AFP, then it simply means President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will not, will never institute a purge in both institutions. For much lesser reasons, when drugs were not yet a real menace but corruption was rearing its ugly head, President Fidel Ramos through DILG secretary Rafael Aluman purged the top echelons of the PNP. Police director-general Cesar Nazareno was sent off packing.

I don’t see DILG secretary Joey Lina doing anything like that. He seems to be either hapless or helpless with no power over the PNP.

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And President Arroyo – although we must congratulate her for supporting the Senate probe of charges against Lacson – doesn’t want the boat to be rocked. She needs AFP and PNP support to stay the course until 2004, and she doesn’t want Senator Lacson in the way. She too is scared stiff of narco-politics like all of us.

Another big loser is Senate minority leader Aquilino (Nene) Pimentel. He has seemingly joined the forces of Beelzebub by saying Mary Ong, Angelo "Ador" Mawanay and other witnesses "should be punished by the Senate" if there is no truth to what they are saying. Formerly a freedom fighter, Pimentel is now a sabre-toothed shark in the service of Puwersa ng Masa, the political gondola of Joseph Estrada whose alleged penchant for plunder has outdone that of Ferdinand Marcos.

The Senate probe must continue, of course, and we need more Mary Ongs, more Danny Devnanis, more Kim Wongs to paint and depict our own Guernica, the evolving horrors of what the Philippines has become today. In my boyhood years, the Philippines was "the land of morning, child of the sun returning, with fervor burning, thee do our souls adore." Egad, what have we become!

As I write, I have three file copies on the Kuratong Baleleng case, courtesy of education secretary Raul Roco. Raul was in 1995-98 chair of the Senate committee of justice and human rights which, together with the committee on national defense and security chaired by Sen. Orlando Mercado, conducted a joint investigation of the Kuratong Baleleng massacre. The conclusion was that indeed there was a police massacre where eleven gang members were "killed in cold blood while in the custody of law enforcers in the early morning of May 18, 1995 in Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City."

And who were these law enforcers the Senate directed should be charged with murder? They were Superintendents Panfilo Lacson, Jewel Canson, Romeo Acop, Francisco Zubia, Romulo Sales, Almario Hilario, Luiso Ticman, Zozorabel Laureles, PC Inspectors Micheal Ray Aquino, Gil Meneses, Cesar Mancao, Jose Erwin Villacorta, Rolando Anduyan, Glenn Dumlao, Sotero Ramos, Ricardo Dandan, SPO4 Vicente Arnado, SPO1 Wilfredo Cartero and SPO1 Wilfredo Angeles.

A portion of the Roco committee’s report said: "It is bad enough to disregard the right that no man shall be deprived of his life without due process. It is a cynical abuse of law to manipulate the investigative powers within the PNP to result in a cover-up instead of a revelation." That was six years ago. That early, Senator Roco requested President Ramos "to adamantly pursue the reorganization and strengthening of the PNP."

Even more devastating was the sworn statement (which he later recanted after fleeing to Canada) of SPO2 Eduardo de los Reyes, a member of the police team, who personally saw generals Lacson, Acop, Mancao, Canson monitoring the massacre operations "through their radios." Apparently, the eleven Kuratong Baleleng gang members were in two vans. As he boarded one van to take pictures, De los Reyes "noticed that the slain persons were all handcuffed with their hands behind their backs." So there was no shootout. It was a massacre, a rubout, the police riddling the two vans with a hail of bullets, many of the victims receiving five to ten bullet wounds each.

What made the massacre even more sinister was on the same day, Kuratong Baleleng gang chief Wilson Soronda was killed in his hideout, his three or four duffel bags emptied of their contents, reportedly containing P30 to P50 million in bank loot. The killers and loot-takers were identified as Lacson’s men by media and nobody until today knows where the money went. I was at the time writing with a passion about the massacre. And the loot. Coincidence or not, five fully armed men swooped on my residence, held me and my family hostage for eight hours, hogtied everybody, threatened a number of times to kill all of us, two pistols thrust against my temple, a long kitchen knife on my chest. God must have come to our rescue. We survived the ordeal even as I defied the criminals to kill me. Instinctively, I knew who was behind the five criminals. By the way the two ringleaders were never caught. They dissolved into thin air.

I have, like many others, become a Lacson watcher. The man fascinates me no end. Especially when he insists he has lived an open life, has never committed any crime or major wrongdoing. "And I can tell you that with a straight face." To which talk show host Pia Hontiveros replied with a poker face: "But you always have a straight face." You were the principal accused in the Kuratong Baleleng rubout, Mr. Senator, and two Senate committees accused you of murder or homicide, of killing the eleven gang members in cold blood. You say now you never had any blood on your hands?