Americans are fond of saying “When shit hits the fan, it rains on everyone” and it is apropos the disaster that has befallen Rodrigo Duterte and his sidekicks Sens. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go and Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa, both of whom have been hit hard by the revelations of retired Col. Royina Garma before the House of Representatives.
Garma knows whereof she speaks as she was too close to Duterte, who had never developed camaraderie with the Philippine National Police (PNP) and who had been the butt of jokes by generals like the late Gen. Ramon Montano, who recalled the cops securing the Mayor Duterte upon learning that he was using the law enforcers to harass his political enemies. Duterte pleaded that his bodyguards be returned but Montano relented. Without his personal army, Duterte was a meek lamb. She was pressured no end by inquisitive lawmakers, who asked her about her reported romantic liaison with Duterte and her alleged protection racket in Cebu along with her properties and investments after becoming general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) and the nepo babies she had appointed, Garma chose to be on the safe side.
This is a sordid case of “ligtas-katawan” for her as the Duterte ship sinks along with the captain. Duterte called up Garma to ask who would helm the ship called the “war on drugs.” It was May 2016 when the call came, right after Duterte was already the “president-elect” courtesy of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Go claimed Garma’s allegation about the call was pure bunk. He failed to note that the election was held in the same month and the digitized results were already out. What the call implied was Duterte was rushing to create a national task force to clean up the country of the “drug menace” even before he officially takes over Malacanang. Eventually, Garma thought of Edilberto Leonardo of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) as the best guy for the job since he could be loyal to Duterte as well as to his “kapatiran,” the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC.)
More calls came, one from Ismina “Muking” Espino, an aide to Go who became an assistant of Go, then officially the most special assistant of Duterte who also headed the Presidential Management Office (PMO.) Muking asked about the contact details of Leonardo, who later met with Duterte to plan the “war on drugs” operations at Hotel Mandaya in Davao City, the dimly lit haunts of the Dutertes. Then, Peter Parungo entered the scene as the clerk who took care of all the accounts held at BDO, Metrobank and PSBank. The dramatis personae is comprised of Duterte disciples, from Go, who had been Duterte’s special assistant since 1998, to Muking Espino, the aide to the top Duterte aide, and then to Parungo, who was not organic to the PNP, but was most trusted to be the payoff clerk, checking on the war’s death and gifting the murderers with handsome incentives. From the puny P5,000 per hit for the lesser mortals in Davao City, the rewards skyrocketed to P20,000 and up to P1-million for the big shots in Luzon and the Visayas. The principle was “no kill, no pay.”
Garma’s narrative hews closely to the disclosures made years ago by SPO3 Arturo Lascanas whose affidavit was closely examined by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where Duterte, Go, Sen. Ronald de la Rosa, several PNP officials and even Vice President Sara Duterte have been tagged for the 30,000 killings during the previous administration. The killings never stopped when Sara took over as Davao City mayor. Go asked critics to stop pontificating, blasting congressmen who suddenly found it necessary to attack Duterte after clapping their hands sore for the six years of the war on drugs. “Anim na SONA (State of the Nation Address), tuwing binabanggit ni Pangulong Duterte ang war on drugs, nagpapalakpakan po ang lahat, standing ovation. Tapos bakit ngayon sinisisi? Bakit ngayon mag-isa na lang siya? Hindi ba kayo nakinabang?” (Whenever President Duterte mentioned the war on drugs in those six SONAs, everyone was praising him. There were standing ovations. But why are you blaming him now? Why does it seem that he is alone now? Didn’t you benefit from it?) Go howled. Go denied that there was a reward system for that “war,” arguing that there were no death squads and no Leonardo task force to oversee the bloody scheme. “Pero wala siyang sinabi na ‘patayin mo ‘to, patayin mo ‘yan.’ Wala pong reward system na umiiral sa kanyang opisina. Sinusuportahan niya po ang kapulisan, kung ano ang pwede niyang suporta para magampananan po nila ang kanilang tungkulin.”
He talked as if the congressmen had a debt of gratitude to Duterte for making orphans out of hundreds of thousands of children and making widows of tens of thousands of women. Lawmakers could not have profited from the murders committed by Duterte death squads. They don’t need bloody side hustles organized by a man scared stiff by the ghosts of Malacanang. At any rate, Go’s philippic is out of whack since his master Duterte never eliminated the drug but instead intensified turf wars among the drug kingpins, with those identified with Duterte surviving and local officials tagged in the hit list massacred (like the Parojinogs, assassinated like Mayor Antonio Halili) or harassed no end like Mayors Vicente Loot and Jed Mabilog. A report from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) showed that the illegal shabu trade expanded during Duterte’s incumbency. The Triad kingpins known to the Yang brothers just went about their business and systematically cut down rivals.
The entire trouble with Go is that he is not assessing the gravity of the situation and merely relying on his overworked PR to do the thinking for him. That is not the proper way of saving his own hide. Fact is, Garma gave him a big problem and he will now have to provide indisputable proof that he is lily-white and had no connection whatsoever with Espino, Parungo, Leonardo, Garma and the six or seven close-in players in the “war on drugs” directorate comprised of several cops and an accused rapist. Then, when the receipts are produced, the bank deposits and withdrawals made in the names of hitmen or their surrogates are found, how can he wriggle away from the rabbit hole?
