Protesting too much

Why are half-brothers JV Ejercito and Jude Estrada protesting too much? All PNP Director General Leandro Mendoza said was that an alias Dragon Head owns the shabu factory in San Juan, where JV is mayor and where seven Chinese chemists were arrested in a raid last Friday. Sure, Mendoza revealed that Dragon Head is the son of a prominent national politician from that town. At least four past and present Cabinet members live in San Juan, along with at least eight legislators. So why did Estrada feel alluded to, and why is Ejercito crying political harassment against the family of former President Joseph Estrada?

Mendoza, of course, must not stop at merely citing investigation reports. It’s inconceivable for the Chinese nationals to have run the shabu factory on their own. They must have a local padrino. For the police work to be complete, Mendoza should identify and arrest Dragon Head, despite the suspect’s supposed political con-nections. Otherwise, the raid will be for naught – no different from last year’s confiscation of 504 kilos of shabu worth P5 billion from Mayor Ronnie Mitra of Panulukan, Quezon, who couldn’t have bankrolled the shipment by his lonesome. Contraband that large from Chinese Triads would have required a downpayment of at least 25 percent or P1.25 billion, going by police intelligence estimates. Mitra, though he suddenly found enough wealth to build a house and buy a van, still appears to have no personal resources to raise such amount. That the PNP never dug deep enough into that case to ferret out Mitra’s financier rendered that haul a "nonachievement."

But back to the San Juan raid, in which the PNP Narcotics Group found 213 kilos of ephedrine, 208 bottles of ethanol, and 284 gallons of acetone – enough to make P100 million worth of shabu. The factory had modern equipment. That it was located in a bungalow in middle-class Addition Hills means the chemists know how to cook shabu without the usual foul odor.

Shabu labs used to be located in the middle of piggeries to disguise the stench the comes with the processing of the synthetic drug. The Triads have come a long way in making the drug that’s usually called poor man’s cocaine because it costs a fifth of the price for a toke.

Ejercito says the shabu factory couldn’t have been in existence for the past ten years in the town where, before him, his father Joseph and half-brother Jinggoy Estrada had reigned as mayor too. The lab secured a business permit only four months ago, he cites municipal records. Before that, in June, the bungalow owner Rose Yu had called for police assistance against vandals and burglars. And two months before, the police had raided a jueteng joint in the house across the street. Shabu makers wouldn’t have wished to attract police attention to themselves, Ejercito concludes. So it must have been after June that the bungalow, based on police reports, came into the possession of a certain Kim Chuy, who in turn leased it to Jimmy Wong Aquino in October.

"They’re always picking on us," Ejercito cries about the supposed harassment by the administration of his family. Really? Nobody linked them to the two dozen civilians in black jackets and with long arms arrested in a building beside the San Juan town hall on the eve of Election Day last May. Nobody ever linked them to the Vietnamese terrorist trio whose two hideouts in San Juan yielded in a police raid in August pails of ammonium sulfate, cellphones and batteries that were to be fashioned into time bombs. Nobody pointed a finger at them about the murder of actress Nida Blanca in San Juan last November. So why is he suddenly claiming harassment on this drug case?

Ejercito apparently knows so much circumstances surrounding the bungalow. As mayor, he must cooperate with the police instead of yelling that the raid was untimely since it was conducted two days before the celebration of EDSA-II’s first anniversary.

Jude Estrada is a bigger wonder, crying to the press that Mendoza is persecuting him. But there’s reason to investigate him. Weeks before his father was elected President in 1998, an actor-boyfriend had sobbed on national television about their drugged sessions. About the same time, he was reported to have mauled a grandma inside the latter’s Mandaluyong condo supposedly because of some stuff she refused to yield to him. That grandma is the mother of the estranged wife of Albert Sy Española, listed in police records as a notorious shabu distributor. Jude was reported to be close once to that family.

Española has been in and out of NBI and PNP detention countless times. He always managed to have nonbailable charges of drug-pushing against him downgraded to mere drug-using, which is bailable. While coolly waiting in jail for his powerful patrons to work on law enforcement officers and fiscals, he always managed to slip out at night to continue distributing shabu.

Española was spotted during the takeover of the EDSA Shrine by Estrada loyalists from April 25 to May 1, 2001. He not only was agitating the crowds to march to Malacañang, but also was feeding a group of men, and handing out cash, liquor bottles and shabu. Before that, he worked as aide and gunrunner of a senator aligned with Estrada. Perhaps, Jude can fill in the other details.

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Napocor’s Luzon-wide blackout Monday crippled factories and shops. Yet it won’t recompense them for the hundreds of millions of pesos in lost opportunities. The business paralysis reminds me of a story that circulated on the Net months ago:

A man applies for janitor at a computer factory. The manager scans the job form and asks why the man left the e-mail address blank. "I don’t have a computer or e-mail, Sir," he explains. To which the manager snaps, "Then you virtually don’t exist, so how can you land a job?"

Stunned, the man leaves, and with what cash he has left in pocket, he buys a bag of tomatoes. In less than two hours, he sells the tomatoes for double what he paid for them. He goes and buys two bags, and again sells them for double the amount.

He decides to go into the tomato business and makes modest sums each day. In a few months, he buys a cart to move crates and crates of the stuff. After a year, he buys a pickup to increase his volumes. At the end of five years, he has a fleet of trucks and a chain of tomato warehouses. He is rich enough to take out insurance policies for his family.

The man contacts an insurance agent, who helps him fill out the forms. When they reach the blank for e-mail address, the man admits he has none. "What?" says the astounded agent, "How on earth did you make such wealth without Internet, e-mail and e-commerce. Just imagine where you’d be now had you been wired from the very start!"

There’s a lesson there somewhere, more so if the man said, "Why, I’d still be a janitor in a computer factory." He would have made triple had he worked for Napocor.

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