Pandoy

They say, below their breath, evil runs rampant in the Southern Tagalog region. This is because the lawbreakers and the law enforcers fall on the same side.

Recent events seem to bear that out.

Earlier this week, policemen knocked on the door of Fernando “Pandoy” Morales of San Juan, Batangas. They were there to serve an arrest warrant for illegal possession of firearms — at one in the morning.

That is not just unusual. That is nightmarish.

By his wife’s account, they were roused from sleep by that visit at the unholiest hour. Unholy, indeed. After Pandoy opened the door for his visitors, he was grabbed. Shots rang out. Pandoy was killed in what was reported to be a shootout with the police.

Beware of policemen serving warrants in the wee hours of the morning. Beware, too, of startling coincidences.

Pandoy, it turns out, is associated with Vic Siman, the principal character in that group that ran into a hurriedly assembled checkpoint in Atimonan, Quezon. That run-in resulted in a carnage. Thirteen were killed. At last count, about 200 bullets rained on the two vehicles reportedly trying to run a checkpoint.

There are all sorts of rumor about Pandoy. Some say he was in charge of Siman’s Batangas gambling operations. Other say he was on the third vehicle that managed to evade the hail of fire at the Atimonan incident.

The death of Pandoy, at any rate, appears too closely linked to the Atimonan event it ought to be part of the coverage of the NBI investigation. It is not clear from the news reports if the NBI prove is exclusively focused on the Atimonan event or will include peripheral incidents such as that which happened in San Juan, Batangas.

There is one other incident, the one that happened in Calamba, Laguna last November. In that incident, six alleged guns-for-hire were killed when they tried to run a police checkpoint. The casualties include a college student who, according to his relatives, merely hitched a ride with the other casualties.

The Calamba incident not only bears close resemblance to what subsequently happened in Atimonan. Among the casualties in this incident was another associate of Siman. That checkpoint, it appears, was manned by the same police unit present at Atimonan.

From all appearances, the incidents at Calamba, Atimonan and San Juan are related. The casualties, with the exception of those who hitched rides or were simply in the wrong company at the wrong time (and they are quite many), seem to be somehow connected.

Were it not for the Atimonan incident, what happened in Calamba might have been forgotten, thrown into the dead files according to the official police version of what occurred. The dead men could tell no tales. The ferocity of the “shootouts” ensured there were no survivors. The relatives of those we may now presume to be victims were too small to win media space or plead for intervention from higher authorities.

The Atimonan incident, too, might have fallen into the dead files according to the official version of what happened. Recall that the Palace spokesperson Abigail Valte was quick in upholding the official version of the event: that this was a “legitimate” checkpoint that guns-for-hire tried to run.

If we all listened to Valte, this thing might have been forgotten, pushed under the rug. No one might have paid much attention to the subsequent killing of Pandoy Morales. That, too, was passed off as a “shootout” between a criminal and righteous law enforcers.

Fortunately, not of all of us took Valte’s word hook, line and sinker. It is important that one reporter was on the scene, making photographic record of the incident before the SOCO arrived to sort of prep the details to support the official version. We now view discrepancies between what the journalist was able to record and what the SOCO passes off as photographic records of the scene.

In those discrepancies, dead men appear to have acquired guns. At least two items of some apparent importance are present in the photos but absent in the police inventory of things recovered at the scene.

It is important, too, that media maintained its robust skepticism — despite repeated Palace admonitions to play up the good news, perhaps only the good news.

It was media, not the police, that established the link between the Calamba and Atimonan incidents (not to mention the Pasig and Paranaque incidents). It was media, not the police, that linked Pandoy to Siman. It is media that is now goading government not only to conduct a reliable investigation but to make that transparent as well.

There is something to be said here for freedom of information — even as the Palace now takes a tepid attitude towards the proposed law that will make that freedom enforceable.

Only after the media raised serious questions about the Atimonan incident did the Palace move to have the matter investigated by the NBI rather than the police. Or else that ridiculously scarce first report of the incident given the PNP chief might have remained the official version of the incident. So ridiculous was that first report, the PNP chief threw it back to the investigators who subsequently produced a vastly more voluminous documentation.

Only after media raised serious questions about the Pandoy killing did the higher authorities relieve the Region 4-A director under whose watch things appear to have gotten out of hand in Southern Tagalog.

It is for media now to assert its watchdog role to see to it the horrible story underpinning these horrible incidents be told.