Mancao feels safer as ‘moving target’ outside jail

Former Police Colonel Cezar Mancao II is escorted by NBI agents led by NBI Regional Director Ric Diaz as they make their way to the RTC branch 18 for the arraignment on Dacer-Corbito double murder in Manila. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Former Senior Superintendent Cezar Mancao II said he felt better as a moving target outside of jail because efforts to reach out to Senator Panfilo Lacson, whom he had implicated in the Dacer-Corbito murder case, had proven futile and he would have been an easier target if he had been transferred to the Manila City jail as recently ordered by a court.

“Mabuti nang lumaban sa labas; moving target ako, mahirap akong mahagip, kesa sa loob na madali akong sungkitin at kitilin ang buhay ko (It’s better to fight outside; I’d be a moving target hard to hit whereas inside I could be killed more easily,” Mancao said in a phone interview aired on television Friday morning.

Mancao escaped from his cell at the National Bureau of Investigation early Thursday, when he was scheduled to be transferred to Manila City Jail.

“Hindi ako mabubuhay nang matagal kapag nasa kustodiya ako ng NBI o Manila City Jail (I would not live long in the custody of the NBI or the Manila City Jail),” Mancao said. He accused Lacson on Thursday of trying to have him killed.

Mancao said he still trusted the NBI and the Department of Justice, which were “supportive” of him, and hoped his concerns would  be addressed. He said he would eventually surrender, “without any time frame, hopefully sooner.”

“Ngayon kampante ako sa labas, nakakapagsalita ako, dahil sa loob hindi ako pinapakinggan (Now I’m more at ease outside because I can talk: they did not listen to me while I was inside)” Mancao said.

“Maging fair sana. Kung hindi ako pumalag, under na ko ng ibang departamento. Pinapaliit ang mundo ko. Hustisya lang talaga gusto kong makamit (I wish they would be fair. If I had not taken action, I would now have been under a different department. They’re making my world smaller. All I wish is to obtain justice),” he added.

Mancao, whose status as a state witnessed has been disapproved by the court, said he did not take it against co-accused Michael Ray Aquino and Glenn Dumlao  that the court had agreed to their becoming state witnesses and allowed them to leave jail.

“In my case, there is no justice,” he added, still in Filipino. “They were principal accused. There is only one witness against me, Colonel Dumlao. But they said in court I had nothing to do in the operation” to kill publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000 in a crime in which Lacson was earlier implicated but eventually exculpated by the Court of Appeals.

Lacson, head of the Philippine National Police at the time of the double murder, was the superior of Aquino, Dumlao and Mancao.

Mancao charged that the court had given in to pressure from Lacson, who he claimed had a hand in the appointment of the judge.

“I saw no justice in the way the case against me was going. I believe that Senator Lacson has a hand. In fact a common friend, an emissary, talked to him and related to me that I need to make a public apology to Senator Lacson,” Mancao said.

“But still there is no assurance,” he said, recounting efforts by various people on his behalf to reach out to Lacson through politicians, the senators relatives.

“My wheelchair-bound mother went to the office of Senator Lacson to plead with him sometime February this year,” Mancao said, adding that these efforts proved futile.

On the suggestion that his problems were his karma for allowing himself to be used by the Arroyo administration to pin Lacson down, Mancao said, “I think I was used but I did not make myself succumb to what they wanted… If I had done so, even former President Erap would have been convicted, if I had made a statement implicating them.”