Hottest ‘telenovela’ in town

Truth, it’s been said, is stranger than fiction and may I add, more interesting, too, as seen in the number of viewers hooked on the hearings of the House of Representatives’ quad committee.

Indeed, the hearings on extrajudicial killings, Philippine offshore gaming operations and illegal drugs have become the hottest telenovela in town, beating ABS-CBN’s newest edge-of-your-seat teleserye, Lavender Fields and the former blockbuster FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano.

The damning testimonies and revelations unearthed by the committee have all the elements of a soap opera – money, murder, drugs, power and even love triangles.

Except this is real life and not some fictional television series.

The so-called quad comm is composed of the House committees on dangerous drugs, public order and safety, public accounts and human rights.

I took note of the livestream numbers garnered by the 8th House quad comm hearing held last Oct. 11, based on the YouTube channels of the different media organizations and the House of Representatives:

• 938,000 views (ABS-CBN News)

• 618,000 views (House of Representatives)

• 428,000 views (Inquirer)

• 134,000 views (GMA-7)

These do not yet include the YouTube channels of other media outlets.

The big reveal

It was during the Oct. 11 hearing when a weeping Royina Garma, former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office general manager, revealed how former president Rodrigo Duterte asked her to look for a police officer who would implement his war on drugs on a nationwide scale, which was to be patterned after the Davao model.

Says Garma in her signed affidavit:

“After considerable reflection, I am now executing this affidavit to provide comprehensive information to the Quad Comm regarding everything I personally know about the war on drugs during the former administration.

“In May 2016, I received a call from then-president Rodrigo Duterte at approximately 5 a.m., instructing him to meet me at his residence in Doña Luisa, Davao...

“During our meeting, he requested that I locate a Philippine National Police officer or operative who is a member of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, indicating that he needed someone capable of implementing the War on Drugs on a national scale, replicating the Davao model. This Davao Model referred to the system involving payment and rewards.”

At the same hearing, Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel asked Garma about the amount of rewards.

She said the biggest reward given for a killing related to the war on drugs was P1 million.

It was quite a bombshell. Imagine that! Murders were rewarded.

It’s surreal, jaw-dropping and even more damning than any plot in any of the primetime teleseryes.

In fact, the numbers actually beat FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano statistics, which at one point had an all-time high of 350,373 live concurrent views on Kapamilya Online Live on YouTube (July 11, 2022).

And as Bilyonaryo reported last month, “Dinaig Pa Lavender Fields!”

“A check of the House of Representatives’ official YouTube page showed that the two-part livestream of the panel’s seventh hearing on Sept. 27 racked up nearly 1.3 million views. That’s more than the 972,000 views garnered by ABS-CBN’s two-part YouTube livestream on the same day of the primetime series Lavender Fields, which stars Jericho Rosales, Jodi Sta. Maria and Janine Gutierrez,” it said.

During that Sept. 27 hearing, the seventh by the quad comm, Police Lt. Col. Santi Mendoza tagged National Police Commission Commissioner Edilberto Leonardo and Garma as the masterminds of the 2019 killing of then-PCSO board secretary Wesley Barayuga.

What do these numbers tell us?

It means that more and more Filipinos want to know the truth about the EJKs, the illegal drugs and the illegal POGOs, or all the criminal activities during the time of Rody Duterte.

As I said in a previous column, during Duterte’s time, these stories were told only in whispers in coffee shops or behind closed doors or were dismissed as mere conspiracy theories.

Back then, people were afraid to speak about these gruesome murders and illegal activities.

But now, these dirty secrets are unraveling, thanks to the House of Representatives and the quad comm hearings.

It is obvious that the people are concerned and interested. Many would like to know and I’m sure they include the families of the drug war victims themselves.

What happens next?

The inquiry isn’t over, with more hearings to come, I’m told. At the rate things are going, it seems that the plot thickens every day.

The challenge now for the quad comm and the leadership of the House, Speaker Martin Romualdez, is to make sure that the congressional-wide inquiry leads to concrete steps toward that attainment of elusive justice for the victims of the bloody drug war.

The inquiry, he said, aims to uncover the truth, identify the perpetrators of those illicit activities, obtain justice for the victims and their respective families and, most importantly, to ferret out the deficiencies and flaws in our existing laws and legislate appropriate remedies.

As a lawyer himself, Speaker Romualdez, for sure, can already tell how strong and damning the testimonies of the witnesses are.

Because of these confessions, many questions have now been answered.

The next step is to use such information to formulate legislative solutions and to uphold the rule of law.

Just like in any teleserye, I’m sure Filipinos glued to the hottest teleserye in town want to see a good ending, the kind where the good will triumph over evil and the bad guys are brought to justice.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.