Ghost busters

“Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts floating between the lines.” Norweigian poet Henrik Ibsen’s remark came to mind on reading reports  that  former police Senior Supt. Cezar Mancao scrammed  from his National Bureau og Investigation cell.  How?  By “using his own key.”

Mancao fled to the US after being linked to murders of  public relations man Bubby Dacer and driver Emmanuel Corbito. On Nov. 24, 2000, Dacer was to  brief ex-President Fidel Ramos on the raging BW stock resources scandal. He never made it.

Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) agents led by former Supt. Michael Ray Aquino flagged down Dacer’s car at a Makati intersection. Dacer and driver were strangled by PAOCTF agents and cops “using electric cords before their corpses” were torched, farmers Alex Diloy and Jimmy Lopez later testified.

Their burnt corpses were found four days later in Cavite. University of the Philippines forensic pathologists identified Dacer and Corbito from, among other evidence,  “metal dental plates and a ring.”

President Joseph Estrada at the time twisted in the wind from impeachment. Among other charges he was  repeatedly pressed by the Securities and Exchange Commission to clear BW Resources. Were BWR gambling permits, authorized by Erap swapped for  BW shares?

Financier Dante Tan didn’t wait to be asked. He bolted without a forwarding address. On March 31, 2001, Ramos accused Estrada of being involved in the “tragic and murderous kidnapping” Dacer and Corbito.

“My name is not bigote (mustache),” Estrada told Inquirer. “It is Erap. People call me Erap,” said the current candidate for Manila mayor. That outburst came after fugitive Cezar  Mancao pinpointed Bigote as the “mastermind” in the Cavite rubout.

Footage from a security camera showed Mancao slam the cell door  behind him  at 1:14 a.m. Thursday and scale the fence. Since then, he’s waged  “war” against Sen. Panfilo Lacson by cell phone.

Lacson ignored Mancao’s allegation on  masterminding the Dacer-Corbito rubout. “I’ve long forgiven him and have no interest in him.” The Court of Appeals in February 2011 spiked the double-murder case against Lacson, who then did a “Mancao.” There was no probable cause “to justify filing two separate informations for murder against [Lacson]. Consistent with his constitutional right to be presumed innocent and in consonance with existing jurisprudence, he should be relieved from the agony of trial.”

“The ridiculousness of it all is mind-boggling,” an Inquirer editorial notes. “The (Mancao breakout) was captured on a CCTV camera. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima then called Mancao directly to personally confirm with him that he had indeed bolted. “Yes, ma’am,” was Mancao’s polite reply. “And, in the wake of another purported massive manhunt launched to locate the latest high-profile fugitive, Mancao was still able to grant phone interviews to TV stations 10 hours after he ambled out of the NBI.”

Was it true NBI agents missed him by minutes in Bulacan Friday night, the Inquirer asked. Mancao ducked, saying: “What they’ll spend in looking for me is better donated to Typhoon ‘Pablo’ victims.in  Compostela Valley.” Mancao is running for a seat on the Compostela Valley provincial board in the May 13 elections.

This exchange from someone on the run is riveting. But it cam smudge the basic issue, namely, the  unsolved murder of two citizens—Dacer and Corbito.

“Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man’s life,” Daniel Webster wrote.  Arguments over the roots of this devaluation of God-given life will therefore  persist. Did the Marcos dictatorship’s torture chambers create this monster in units like the Military Intelligence Security Group?

That’s where Panfilo Lacson, a young Philippine Military Academy Class ‘71 graduate started a  blood-stained climb to national power, notes the Yale University study: “Closer Than Brothers.”  “Under martial law, torture became an instrument of power,” Alfred McCoy notes. Between 1975 and 1985, at least  737 Filipinos disappeared.   But nearly four times that number—some 2,520, equivalent to 77 percent of all victims were salvaged.

“As the sapling is bent, so will the tree grow.” Lieutenant (later senator) Lacson thrived in that milieu. Lacson stamped that mold on PAOCTF aides Mancao, Glenn Dumlao, Michael Ray Aquino, among others in a career that included serving Erap as PAFCOTF overseer.

Or does cancer go back further? “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain  asked after slaying Abel.

Where does this leave the quest for justice by the families of  driver Corbito and Dacer? Lacson pledged  to tell the Dacer siblings all he knew about the rubout. “That never happened,” Carina Dacer told Radyo Inquirer.

Thus, Carina, with sisters Emily, Sabina and Amparo filed a $20 million civil suit against Lacson, deposed President Joseph Estrada and four others before a U.S. District Court in California for the salvaging of their father. The Mancao episode puts off that quest for justice further still.

As Election Day nears, ghosts of evils past resurged with the Mancao escape. The buck for PAOCTF operations stopped with the President. Now, candidate for Manila mayor Erap must exorcise those specters by disproving Fidel Ramos’ charge that he winked at the Dacer-Corbito rubout.

Siya ang gumagawa ng multo, at siya rin any natatakot, the old proverb says. “He made the ghost and was scared of it.”