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BY HERBERT VEGO
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‘What’s happening to our country, General?’
“WHAT’s happening to our country, General?”
Panay News was a one-year-old weekly when all the Manila dailies screamed the above quotation from former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez while he was fighting for life in a hospital. He had been shot while riding in his car somewhere in Quezon City.
The general he was talking to on that date – July 21, 1982 – was Tomas Karingal, then the police chief of Quezon City. Fortunately, Pelaez survived with six bullets removed from his body.
Karingal could only promise to run after the unidentified culprit.
Most Filipinos could only suppress their righteous indignation despite the rumor that a political enemy had masterminded the ambush. Although President Ferdinand Marcos had already officially lifted martial law at that time, no witness dared to name names.
By a strange twist of fate, around two years later, Karingal himself was shot dead by three unidentified men while dining in a restaurant within his territory.
Thirty-four years later today, we slightly paraphrase the question: “What’s happening to our country, President Duterte?”
We echo the old question in the wake of the brutal killing of Albuera, Leyte mayor Rolando Espinosa and “drug pusher” Raul Yap while “safely detained” at the Baybay City, Leyte sub-provincial jail. We are made to believe that the elements of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), who had forced their way in to serve a search warrant without coordinating with the jail warden, acted in self-defense against the “pistol-armed” inmate. No need to elaborate; it’s still the stuff reverberating on radio, TV and print media.
As of yesterday afternoon, the nation was still waiting with bated breath for the President of the Philippines to issue a statement on the apparently unnecessary CIDG raid. Why his deafening silence?
It was beyond imagination that the police would run after an already jailed crime suspect. But it did happen, and only in the Philippines! If it was not extrajudicial killing, then I don’t know what is.
Communications secretary Martin Andanar could only vaguely call Espinosa’s death ”a big loss to the government.” Had he been kept alive, he could testify against the government officials he had named in an affidavit as recipients of drug money from his son Rolando “Kerwin” Jr., now under police custody in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
On the other hand, Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, in an interview live from Las Vegas over DzBB last Sunday, called Sen. Leila de Lima the “common denominator” in the killing of Espinosa and a Cebu policeman.
He did not elaborate, but we remember that it was Police Officer 2 Ryan del Castillo who was found dead in Lapu-Lapu City in August 2016 after accusing Deputy Director General Marcelo Garbo and Daanbantayan, Cebu mayor Vicente Loot of illegal drug involvement. De Lima and the aforesaid officials are in Kerwin Espinosa’s list of “protectors.”
Despite the incredible circumstances behind the Espinosa slay, it looks like we the people are being conditioned to accept hook, line and sinker lies aimed at whitewashing extrajudicial killings. Putting de Lima in the hot seat would be unbelievable.
Incidentally, both Aguirre and Chief PNP Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa were in Las Vegas for the Pacquiao-Vargas fight when Espinosa “lost” to CIDG.
Since, as Aguirre admitted, the death of the mayor would render his affidavit useless, it could be “happy days are here again” for those named in it – except de Lima. There is now urgency for convicted drug lord Jaybee Sebastian – a survivor of an assassination attempt in his cell at the New Bilibid Prison – to spill more beans against her.
But now comes the next question: Taking cue from the late Mayor Espinosa, who had surrendered for fear of his life, would “cooperation” spare Sebastian?/PN
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