MANILA, Philippines — Former Iloilo City Mayor Jed Mabilog’s revelations, including claims that a police general informed him of the past administration’s alleged plans to either kill him or force him to implicate opposition figures as drug lords, will be the topic of the next quad-committee hearings.
Manila 6th District Rep. Bienvenido Abante announced this in a statement on Monday, regarding how the House of Representatives’ quad-committee will proceed.
“Ang next hearing will be this week, ang pag-uusapan naman EJK (extrajudicial killings). Maganda ito sapagkat ito ‘yung binabanggit ninyo tungkol kay Jed Mabilog, eh we are going to invite him again,” Abante said.
(The next hearing will be this week, and we will talk about EJKs. This is an interesting topic because after what you heard from Jed Mabilog, we are going to invite him again.)
Abante, chair of the House committee on human rights, which also forms part of the four panels, previously revealed that it was late Philippine National Police (PNP) ex-chief Gen. Camilo Pancratius Cascolan who gave Mabilog the heads-up regarding supposed plans to implicate former Senators Mar Roxas and Franklin Drilon in the drug trade.
“Sinulat niya (Mabilog) ang pangalan ng general, kasi ang kanyang testimony ay tinawagan siya o tumawag siya kay then-Director General (Ronald) dela Rosa, at ang sabi […] umuwi na siya ng Pilipinas, he was in Japan,” Abante said in a radio interview with Radyo 630 last Saturday.
(Mabilog wrote the name of the general, because his claim according to his testimony is that he called then-Director General (Ronald) dela Rosa, and he was told […] to return home to the Philippines from Japan.)
“Wala pang isang oras, tinawagan siya ng isang heneral pa, na ang sabi ‘wag kang uuwi, papatayin ka sa Pilipinas. ‘Yon ang pinakinggan niya. At hindi niya masabi ‘yong pangalan, pero sinabi niya — I think I am at liberty to tell that — ito po si General Cascolan,” he added.
(In less than an hour, another general called him to advise him against returning home because he would be killed. He listened to that. And he did not reveal the general’s name, but he eventually named him — I think I am at liberty to tell that — it is General Cascolan.)
Abante was referring to Mabilog’s statement issued under oath during the last quad-committee hearing on September 19, where the former mayor said there was an alleged scheme to force him to link Roxas and Drilon to the illicit business.
READ: Mabilog bares ‘plan’ to force him to tag Roxas, Drilon as ‘drug lords’
According to Mabilog, after he flew to Japan to escape threats to his life, Police Brig. Gen. Bernardo Diaz advised him to call a mobile number, which belonged to then-PNP chief and now Senator dela Rosa.
Mabilog said dela Rosa sympathized with him and believed the former mayor was not involved in the drug trade. However, after his phone call with dela Rosa, another police official whom he did not name called him and warned him that if returned to the Philippines, he would be coerced to “point fingers” at two high-profile personalities as “drug lords.”
Eventually, Mabilog wrote the general’s name on a piece of paper, which Abante revealed to be Cascolan.
Aside from being both former PNP chiefs, Cascolan and dela Rosa were part of the Philippine Military Academy’s Sinagtala Class of 1986. Shortly after former president Rodrigo Duterte appointed dela Rosa as his first PNP chief, Cascolan was named as chief of the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO).
Cascolan died after a lingering illness last November 2023.
READ: Ex-PNP chief Cascolan dies; 59
According to Abante, it was unfortunate that Cascolan could not air his side regarding this issue.
“That is what is saddening here because we can no longer ask him to testify,” Abante said.
“There’s a former colonel, I think it’s Colonel Diaz who told Mabilog that he should call General dela Rosa so that they can talk things through. We might have to summon him too,” he added.
Meanwhile, Abante said that the quad-committee will conduct hearings even as Congress goes on a break by October.
“Yes, in fact we will continue on even during the break because we saw that there is a syndicate involved and we think several generals are greatly involved in these schemes. Unless otherwise we dissolve this syndicate and shed light on which PNP generals are involved in the drug trade, our problem with drugs in the Philippines would not go away,” he said.
The four panels — the House committee on dangerous drugs, committee on public order and safety, committee on public accounts, and committee on human rights — have been investigating a possible correlation between illegal activities in Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogo) hubs, the illicit drug trade, and extrajudicial killings in the past administration’s drug war.
The hearings last September 10 were supposed to be about Pogos. Still, lawmakers were allowed to question Mabilog regarding the past administration’s drug war, given that he was present during the discussions.
Mabilog was among the officials named by Duterte as linked to the illegal drug trade as early as August 2016. However, no case was filed by any prosecutor during the time of the past administration.
READ: Mabilog wife hits back at Duterte: Drug raps unproven