Low blows and cheap shots
October 17th, 2003
It’s not easy to like Panfilo Lacson. His effort to talk in what he thinks is tough Americanese (“I’ve had a hell of a week”) is annoying, and there’s something not quite right in that Hitler haircut. There’s also his ambition, the extent of which aptly fits Shakespeare’s description of that vice as “vaulting.” But mostly it’s those 11 murders he’s accused of masterminding.
Lacson came to prominence, if one can call it that, as then Vice President Joseph Estrada’s most trusted lieutenant in the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission, which then President Fidel Ramos thought would keep Estrada out of mischief by giving him something to do, such as macho posturing.
Estrada indeed did a lot of macho posturing as PACC head, but also used the Commission to nurture a no-nonsense image in preparation for 1998. Due process and suspects’ rights? What’s that? The law, Estrada once said, protects crime suspects too much. In obedience to all that that statement implied, Lacson was Estrada’s fist. And Estrada approved. When Lacson reported killing 11 members of the Kuratong Baleleng kidnap gang in a “firefight” on Quezon City’s Mariano Marcos Avenue in 1995, Estrada said the 11 “deserved to die.”
Estrada became President in 1998, and took Lacson with him. Lacson headed the high-profile Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force to start with. By then the rumors that Lacson’s men had murdered the KB 11 were rife, as were claims that Lacson might have tortured a political detainee or two during the martial law period as a young officer steadily rising to power in the dreaded Philippine Constabulary.
There were also those other rumors about dollars by the millions being salted away in accounts abroad, and of drug money being made by PAOCTF men. But while Estrada was in power, no one expected anything to come out of the rumors except text messages. In 1999, the KB multiple murder cases filed against Lacson and company were dismissed, and Lacson became National Police Chief.
In 2001 Lacson ran for the Senate and won, thus stoking fears that he would go for the Presidency in 2004. Estrada, however, had been ousted early that year, which meant that the KB cases could be revived and Lacson tried for murder. By 2002 Lacson’s becoming President had become a prospect sufficiently dire for the Arroyo government for it to sic the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines on him. ISAFP accused him of drug-dealing and money-laundering, among other crimes, but couldn’t file charges because, as its then chief admitted in so many words, it didn’t have the evidence. That round went to Lacson, as the ISAFP case went under with the recantation of its chief witness, the truth-challenged Ador Mawanay.
Lacson has been accused of practically every heinous crime anyone can think of, including kidnapping and murder. The other charges are bad enough. But it’s the Kuratong Baleleng murders that outrage the most. If he was responsible for them, the former policeman who would be President would be guilty of denying 11 people not only the right to the due process he’s now claiming, but also that most basic human right of all, the right to life.
As if that weren’t enough, Lacson could also be President. Given Lacson’s standing in the polls, all things being equal, and his coming off as the underdog in that fight, he could win in 2004. If he’s guilty it would mean putting in Malacanang a murdering right-winger indifferent to the Bill of Rights, and an individual no one should trust with any kind of power, least of all those of the Presidency.
It’s not easy to like Panfilo Lacson. But whether he’s guilty or not is a question for the courts to decide. There are people who say you can’t trust the courts, but not all of them are in Lacson’s camp. Didn’t the courts let him off in 1999 in the first place? Sure, the courts could decide Lacson’s guilt or innocence on the basis of everything except evidence, but what else is there? Public opinion?
The court of public opinion is a dangerous because fickle court. It is even more dangerous during a political season. In such times as this, that court judges questions of guilt or innocence by the acclaim of the mob, and entrusts questions of justice to the sentiments of political partisans. And yet, it is in that court where Lacson’s enemies as well as his friends hope his case will be tried. In this common enterprise they have enlisted the willing help of the media by issuing the usual press releases, making the usual statements meant to earn them sound bites, and calling the usual press conferences.
Not that the media can help themselves, given how urgently they’re being courted. There’s Police Chief Superintendent Reynaldo Berroya, for example, who called a press conference last Thursday to gloat over the October 7 Supreme Court decision reopening the Kuratong Baleleng cases for trial. Berroya, director of the Police’s Civil Security Group, is a long-time Lacson nemesis, the very same person who’s supposed to have dared Lacson to throw a fist at him at the Robinson Galleria Suites one evening during EDSA 2 in January 2001.
Berroya has himself accused Lacson of sundry crimes in the past, but himself got off a kidnapping charge for insufficiency of evidence. The charge, Berroya said then, was instigated by Lacson. Whatever be the reason, the bad blood between Berroya and Lacson is no secret. Since 2001 Berroya has been bitter witness to Lacson’s rise from policeman to Senator, and quote possibly has contemplated the dire possibilities a Lacson Presidency would mean for his future.
Thursday this week, Berroya was all smiles on TV, announcing with what passed for a straight face that Lacson when arrested would be handcuffed so he can’t resist arrest. Berroya, however, added, in a snide attack on Lacson’s manhood, that “Lacson is not capable of doing that [resisting arrest].” Further into his press conference, Berroya also suggested that Lacson once arrested could best be kept at the Women’s Correctional Facility for his own safety. Though he kept a straight face except for one arched eyebrow, Berroya’s suggestion was actually an attempt at humor, given the gossip, rampant in text messages, that Lacson’s at least bisexual.
If that was a low blow and a cheap shot, so was Lacson spokesman Lito Banayo’s claim over TV that it’s Mike Arroyo who’s to blame for Lacson’s troubles, but that Arroyo’s days of arrogance are numbered, as the Arroyo administration’s days are. For good measure, Banayo added that Mike and Ignacio Arroyo have an identity crisis because they can’t tell between the two of them who’s the real Jose Pidal. At one point he also came close to predicting an “EDSA IV” to rescue Lacson.
If these are omens of things to come, they’re enough to force a Filipino to rush to the nearest foreign embassy for an immigrant visa. Because if this goes on, it’s not likely that the ends of justice will ever be served, only the ends of politics and personal vendetta. As in the murder of Ninoy Aquino in 1983, both the victims’ kin and the rest of us could end up not ever really knowing who’s responsible for the Kuratong Baleleng murders. So poisoned can the atmosphere be that Lacson’s trial, if he ever goes through one, could turn into a mistrial, and eventually trigger a political crisis of such proportions it will provoke another coup attempt, and cancel the 2004 elections.
If truly interested in seeing justice served, Lacson’s friends and enemies both should weigh every statement they make, and see to it that Lacson gets not only fair, but also decent treatment. That means in both word and deed. It wouldn’t hurt for the police to be professional about the whole business either. Because, gentlemen, while you may not be aware of it, the revival of the Lacson case could be a flashpoint for one of the worst crises of the political system since 2001. Those cheap shots aren’t helping any.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, October 11, 2003)