Magalong: Lying is hard; you have to keep rehearsing

Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong—PHOTO BY VINCENT CABREZA

BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — In the past few days, Bien Casis Jr. has been recording the television broadcasts of the Senate hearings on “ninja cops,” scalawags in the Philippine National Police (PNP) who have been known to pilfer and recycle illegal drugs seized in their operations.

Casis, a housing developer for alumni of the Philippine Military Academy, wants to make sure he gets a front seat to history as he watches his former PMA roommate and now Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong “simply telling the truth and providing everyone the big picture” on a controversial 2013 buy-bust operation in Pampanga.

“That’s what we were taught at the PMA. We don’t lie,” Casis said of his “mistah” (schoolmate).

Magalong confirmed this with his extemporaneous Senate testimony.

“All I had to do was provide facts,” he told the Inquirer in an interview on Friday. “Lying is hard. Lying means you have to keep rehearsing.”

Security checks

But truth-telling can be as difficult, the city mayor found out.  His compulsion to tell the truth and to “right wrongs” has completely changed his world and those of people around him.

When Magalong returned here from Manila on Friday after the Senate hearing, he found policemen and security guards patrolling City Hall with bomb-sniffing dogs. Security checks at every entrance confounded residents and annoyed some employees.

Ramping up security measures at his workplace has become necessary in the wake of prank calls and rumors of assassination plots that spiraled out of the Senate sessions, he said.

Each time he called city officials to issue instructions, Magalong had to reassure them that he was safe.

It’s not always enough for his close-in aides who still seem unnerved every time Magalong leaves his car to admonish owners of roadside establishments that are dirty or unsightly.

Was telling the truth worth the risk?

He can’t help it, said Magalong. Speaking out is simply his personal “default setting,” he added. “I have to be honest even when it hurts.”

‘Obsessive-compulsive’

Born and raised in the country’s summer capital, Magalong, 59, described himself as an “obsessive-compulsive man” who was inspired by an equally compulsive father, Severiano.

“At 89, my father [remains] very meticulous. He keeps his drawers and financial records amazingly neat,” Magalong said.  “I have a different compulsion. I want things to be in order and I want things done correctly. I won’t eat until I complete a task. And when a task is done, I want to make sure it was done efficiently.”

During the Senate hearings, Magalong said he had notes within reach to be sure about the dates in the 2013 ninja cops’ case.

Upholding PMA values

As a PMA cadet, Magalong served as the representative of Sandigan Class 1982 to the academy’s honor committee, a powerful body of the corps of cadets that enforces regulations and punishes those caught lying, stealing or cheating.

“Benjie [who was also Sandigan’s highest-ranking graduate] kept those values,” Casis recalled. “And that may explain many of the decisions he made throughout his career as a policeman and first-time politician.”

Magalong bested former Baguio Vice Mayor Edison Bilog and seven other mayoral bets in the May 13 elections.

When he was commissioned as a junior lieutenant after graduation, Magalong was assigned to the Philippine Constabulary’s 62nd Battalion in Abra province where he saw combat in San Isidro town in 1983.

Recounted former San Isidro Mayor Ernesto Pacsa Sr.: “[Magalong] never backed down. He might have been scared, but I didn’t see it in his face at the time. He was a hardworking man. He did what needed to be done. He is also among the most honest men I know.”

As Cordillera police director at Camp Dangwa in Benguet province in 2011, Magalong introduced a digital crime mapping and analysis system that was later adopted by the PNP.

He was also credited for a violence-free election in Abra in 2013, a first in the province that had seen a lot of killings because of political rivalry.

Souvenirs from a jail riot

While serving in that post, Magalong kept objects collected from a police operation that quelled a jail riot in Bicutan, Taguig City, in 2005. He said those objects reminded him of his mortality.

That reminder aside, he showed he was willing to pay the price for his conviction when he was jailed briefly in 2006 for marching with rebel officer (now Metro Manila Development Authority chief) Danny Lim to protest the use of the police for election fraud. Along with hundreds of Marines and Scout Rangers who joined the march, Magalong was accused of plotting a rebellion.

“We couldn’t help him. We were all still in active service,” Casis recalled.

In 2013, Magalong became chief of the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, a task that allowed him to follow the trail of suspected ninja cops in the provinces.  This would prove crucial to his testimony in the Senate hearings.

Magalong said he did not set out to target the PNP chief,  Gen. Oscar Albayalde, or any member of the force.  The police chief has been in the hot seat for allegedly interceding to stop the dismissal of the officers involved in the 2013 Pampanga drug bust. (See related story on Page A7.)

His Senate testimony, Magalong said, was based on his team’s investigation in Pampanga that, he recalled, Albayalde kept objecting to.

“I always wondered why he was against it. Now that everything has become clearer, Albayalde has tried to isolate himself from his men (accused of selling the seized drugs),” the mayor said.

The police chief had always asserted the PNP’s internal cleansing programs when pressed for answers in the Senate probe, Magalong recalled.

But Albayalde “was quiet during the Senate hearing on Thursday,” Magalong noted. The PNP official, he said,  may have been contemplating the possibility that his men would be jailed and would blame him for failing to protect them.

Mamasapano report

Though he got his promotion as chief superintendent (the equivalent of police general) from then  President Benigno Aquino III, Magalong proved himself independent-minded when he concluded in a fact-finding report that Aquino bore some measure of accountability for the botched 2015 Mamasapano operation that led to the massacre of 44 policemen in Maguindanao province.

It was common perception that his report on Mamasapano had cost him his appointment as PNP chief. But to some extent, it helped him become Baguio mayor.

For Magalong, Baguio became a “mission” after friends and leaders of cause-oriented groups convinced him to run, believing that a true-blue Baguio boy was needed to address the city’s unregulated development.

He quickly used his obsessive-compulsive nature to generate master plans to improve and modernize the city, starting with its landmarks, the Baguio public market and Burnham Park.

Plans to fix the city’s sewage system, build a transportation terminal and rebuild its forests must be “audacious and hair-raising” to become “transformative,” Magalong said.

He has since tapped technical experts, driving them hard to help solve Baguio’s problems, even if it means “losing friends.”

His shift to politics, however, meant giving up a corporate job and his family’s privacy, Magalong said. “I wish I could get my quiet life back,” he said.

Ordinary family

His family was “just like any other Baguio family which minds its own business,” said Mary Sandra Olosan, a neighbor. She said Magalong had been active in village affairs before he joined politics and had once helped launch a petition against an unwanted fencing project in the community.

There is “so much to do in Baguio,” said Magalong, adding that the Senate hearings, for which he “did not volunteer,” are “distractions” because of the controversy they generated.

At the same time, he said, he understood the danger posed by drug syndicates.

“Everyone involved in ninja cop cases has since died. It’s so easy to hire a hit man. For only P10,000, hired guns are willing to kill. Out in the market, you wouldn’t realize until the last moment that you’ve been stabbed,” Magalong said.

“My wife (Arlene) has been a little nervous. She used to go out and jog alone, with no bodyguard … I used to drive our two grandchildren, age 3 and 9, to the mall in Manila. Now I can’t go to Manila without noting if someone is watching or tailing me,” he said.

He has provided “low-key security” for his wife and three adult children, Magalong said, adding that his youngest had been asked to give up managing his trucking business as a precaution.

Hailed as a hero

Sen. Panfilo Lacson and a friend have also sent him armored vehicles to beef up his security, Magalong said.

A day after his Senate appearance on Oct. 4, Magalong was hailed as a hero when he inaugurated a development project in a neighboring Tuba town in Benguet. He continued to accommodate requests for “selfies” from strangers he encounters in Baguio.

When a staffer of a school paper asked him about leadership during a Teachers’ Day program last week, Magalong said leaders need to be bold and unafraid.

“There is a silent majority that approves [of it] when you do good,” he said. —With a report from Kristine Valerie Damian