Life on the run: Palparan tells of 32 months as a fugitive

Jovito Palparan. INQUIRER PHOTO/JOAN BONDOC

MALOLOS, Bulacan—In the two years and eight months that he was being hunted by the authorities, retired Army Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr. was hiding in seven places around Metro Manila.

In all that time, Palparan said he was on his own, without the support or help of active or retired generals, soldiers or communities he had worked with in his 33 years in the Armed Forces.

He said he stayed in Metro Manila to be near his wife, a daughter and two sons.

“I had to be ready to defend them while I was in hiding,” Palparan said in an interview Thursday in his prison cell at the Bulacan Provincial Jail here.

Family’s safety

He said he feared for the safety of his family because the communist New People’s Army (NPA) had threatened to kill him and his family.

Palparan, the former commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division in Central Luzon, is on trial on charges of kidnapping and serious illegal detention in connection with the disappearance of University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño, who were last seen in Hagonoy, Bulacan, in June 2006.

After his arrest in Sta. Mesa, Manila, last Aug. 12, he was temporarily held at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) headquarters.

Following his arraignment at the Malolos Regional Trial Court Branch 14 on Monday, Palparan was detained at the provincial jail here.

Palparan said he was worried that he could be jailed for life because of the case.

On Monday, he filed a motion to quash the case for lack of jurisdiction. He said it was the Sandiganbayan that should try him as he was still in the military service when the crime allegedly happened.

He also said he did not want to submit to the lower court’s jurisdiction because the case filed by the Department of Justice was not among the nine complaints that he had answered during the preliminary investigations.

Palparan’s life on the run began on Dec. 20, 2011, a day after the regional trial court here issued an arrest warrant against him and three coaccused.

He was last seen in public on Dec. 19, 2011, when Bureau of Immigration personnel at the Clark International Airport in Pampanga stopped him from leaving for Singapore.

With the help of a friend, he was able to obtain the use of a safe house near Fort Bonifacio, he said.

It was from this location less than a week later that a person he only identified as a “classmate” volunteered to negotiate for his surrender to President Aquino through a contact in Malacañang.

“I wanted to face the case and wanted assurances of security for myself and my family,” he said.

Nothing came of the attempt because the President “did not agree to the proposal,” he said.

‘Leave it to Gazmin’

“Leave it to General Gazmin (Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin),” the Malacañang contact with whom Palparan’s classmate discussed his surrender was supposed to have said.

Palparan said he abandoned the idea of asking Gazmin for help because, in his assessment, the defense secretary had no influence on the agencies that would have been able to help in dropping the case against him.

“I wasn’t his ‘bata’ (favorite) either,” Palparan said.

His next hideout was in the Pateros-Pasig area, in the care of a woman who was a supporter of the Bantay party-list group, which he briefly represented in Congress. But he said the woman’s daughter feared for their family’s safety so he decided to move out after a few weeks there.

He described the third location as being on the western section of Metro Manila, where he stayed for five months.

The fourth hideout was the family’s house in Taguig City, where he stayed from May to mid-June of 2012.

When his son received information that raids were about to be launched in the properties of Palparan and when relatives of soldiers living near his house reported seeing men surveiling the area, Palparan transferred to an exclusive subdivision in Quezon City.

Small but safe

That was where he stayed the longest, from June 2012 to May 2014, accompanied by two people.

Palparan said the place was small but he felt safe and comfortable, adding he had Internet access and cable television. His hideout allowed him to see people coming in and out of the village, he said.

It was his pension from the military that financed his life on the run, said Palparan.

His daily routine was limited to cooking, eating and sleeping. “It was like I was already in prison,” he said.

The sixth location was in the Pasig-Mandaluyong area where Palparan stayed for a few days.

Lawmen finally caught up with him in a house on Teresa St. in Sta. Mesa, Manila, which Palparan described as a “transit house” as he was preparing to return to the Quezon City subdivision.

He said he had to stay in Sta. Mesa from about May so he could be examined and treated by a doctor for ulcers, low blood pressure, stiff shoulder and intermittent loss of memory—ailments that Palparan believes are related to the stress of his life on the run.

“I was much on my own,” he said, refusing to seek help from other people as he did not want them to become involved in his problems. He subsisted on sweet potato, bananas and vegetables.

No gadgets

“I had no sophisticated network. I had no gadgets,” he said.

But he had several mobile phones and used prepaid SIM cards.

He said he was caught because he let his guard down.

“I did not follow my plan to stay for just a few days in the Sta. Mesa house. I trusted some people. I should have instructed them to withdraw from an ATM (automated teller machine) that was far from my [hiding] place. I should have withdrawn bigger amounts. Nag-relax ako,” Palparan said.

Those who withdrew money for him were a teenaged girl and a boy, he said. “If [government agents] located me through my ATM [transactions], the bank or the government violated the Bank Secrecy Law,” he said.

He suspected that a young man, who is known in the Sta. Mesa neighborhood as a petty thief, must have been the contact of the arresting teams.

“I don’t regret hiding because I came out alive,” he said.–With a report from Carmela Reyes-Estrope, Inquirer Central Luzon

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