Cornered on her role in the “war on drugs,” retired Col. Royina Garma, finally opted to throw former President Rodrigo Duterte and his valet and now Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go y Tesoro under the bus, reading her affidavit before the quad panel at the House of Representatives to tag Duterte as the author of the bloody carnage that killed an estimated 30,000 Filipinos but none from the dreaded Chinese Triad that pioneered shabu production in the Philippines.
As the saying goes, when shit hits the fan, it rains on everyone, not only on Duterte and Bong Go but also on Sen. Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa and their minions who had imposed a reign of terror in Davao City and the entire country. Wish in one hand and crap on the other and see which one fills first. Crap fills much faster than wishes, those responsible for this crime against humanity will find out. This is exactly what is happening to Duterte, whose preoccupation with killings and dead bodies is horrible. Yet, this is the same guy who wouldn’t want to sleep in Malacanang, which is purportedly crawling with ghosts.
The four-page affidavit by Garma said Duterte sought her help in May 2016 to find a police officer and member of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) who would supervise the “war” and be merciless in neutralizing drug kingpins as well as small-time pushers. He suggested Edilberto Leonardo, a Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) graduate and INC member, whom Duterte later met and recruited to form a special unit like the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) that would be responsible for the execution of those in the drug trade. Garma also met with Bong Go, who funded the special unit and delivered the money for successful hits.
Garma claimed that the core of the unit consisted of dismissed police officers, a suspected rapist who was later cleared, and others who were entrusted with the task of validating the information about the targets. She added that the bounty for each hit was decided by the special unit, which also operated against at the Davao Penal Colony (Dapecol) to weed out Bureau of Corrections (Bucor) personnel involved in the drug trade. Garma confirmed that these personnel were neutralized. If the special unit fails to kill its target, it will be reimbursed for planning and operational expenses. The hitmen were incentivized by Duterte, who also provided bonuses through the bank accounts of trusted operatives.
The quad panel summoned Garma as a resource person on Sept. 12, 2024. Less than a month later, she squealed and named the operators who cleaned up Davao City of purported drug dealers as Duterte flew out to Manila to occupy Malacanang on June 30, 2016. Garma’s revelations are significant since they confirm that Duterte is the head of the criminal gang organized by Leonardo to broaden the operations of his death squad from Davao City to the rest of the bloody country. While Garma is expected to seek succor with the Witness Protection Program (WPP), her affidavit did not dwell on the assassination of the PCSO board secretary Wesley Barayuga, who was killed after he left his office. Two police officers tagged Leonardo as the planner and Garma as the beneficiary since Barayuga opposed her actions as then PCSO general manager.
However, Garma’s affidavit will be additional ammunition to the Office of the Prosecutor (OP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has already accumulated truckloads of testimony, including that of retired police officer Arturo Lascanas, who has detailed the many hits of the Davao Death Squad (DDS) and how graft funded those operations, including the assassination of broadcaster Jun Pala in 2003, with the millions of pesos in rewards sourced from a garbage deal. The Lascanas affidavit listed all the people killed under Duterte’s instruction, as well as ambushes of entire families, and how the bodies were disposed of. With no corpus delicti, murder cases end up gathering cobwebs in judicial archives.
Apprised of the stunning development, the human rights alliance Karapatan’s secretary general, Tinay Palabay, said “Royina Garma’s recent testimony bolsters the observations of kin of EJK victims, communities and rights groups on the direct role of Rodrigo Duterte and the PNP in the mass murder of thousands in their sham drug war. Her account also affirms the assertion that the government incentivized the police to undertake and legitimize the state-sanctioned killings of the poor.” Garma’s affidavit, along with the testimonies of witnesses and relatives of Duterte’s “drug war” victims, could hasten the issuance of an arrest warrant against Duterte. Bong Go and Sen. Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa for thousands of EJKs.
“Duterte should be made accountable for the thousands killed in the drug war, the hundreds killed in his counterinsurgency program, the millions who were direly affected by his militarized COVID response, the communities who bore the brunt of military operations undertaken by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF- ELCAC), the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the PNP, as well as the plunder of people’s money through Pharmally and widespread poverty under his watch,” Palabay concluded.
