Fs Cult Thing

Thursday, January 01, 2004
Courts crammed with paper trail of stories

THE court of law is built on paper.

Guilty—a verdict that robs one of freedom, or even life—is on paper. So is not guilty, an order that often comes with the crescendo of wails by the wronged. Motions, manifestations, memoranda, arguments coming from both accuser and accused, they too are all on paper.

Paper is literally everywhere in the Palace of Justice. They clog the vaults and spill out, forming stack upon stack of yellowish brown sheets, lining many a corridor, filling the air with the odor of dust and decay.

But each crumbling sheet is about a face.

Each is about a man or a woman wronged, or claiming to have been so, by a fellow human being, whose face is separately dealt with in another crumbling sheet. This sea of faces, diverse yet somewhat intertwining, was captured by this paper to form part of the year that was.

To his followers, Ruben Ecleo Jr. is the face of a god. The “divine master” of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association, his word meant salvation to those under his dominion.

But others, particularly the family of the late Alona Bacolod-Ecleo, believe he snuffed out the lives of those they held dear.

The trial of Ecleo’s parricide case took the most part of the year that was and, with both sides introducing evidence, will take the most part of this new year.

Salva Me 

Belief in one man’s divinity, too, led 150 residents of Barangay Buhisan, Cebu City to the doors of Salva Me Pater Omnis Oculus Meus (Father, save us from all our offenses). They burned their belongings to join Daddy Divine, also known as Alfredo Verano.

Daddy Divine turned out to have impregnated many a young follower and allegedly had the boys dig tunnels to look for treasure.

The government, in late January, intervened and rescued the children, only to return them days after upon the demand of their parents, who also belong to Salva Me.

Whistleblower 

Father, save us from all our offenses must have also been Bernard Liu’s prayer right before he faced the House committee on dangerous drugs, headed by Rep. Antonio Cuenco.

Under oath, Liu implicated his former employers, Peter and Wellington Lim, in the supposed smuggling of dangerous drugs via the Mactan-Cebu International Airport.

Lawyer Elias Espinoza, the Lim brothers’ lawyer, used Liu’s testimony as an admission and filed a drug complaint against him.

The Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor ruled to dismiss the complaint—and rightfully so, said the Integrated Bar of the Philippines last Dec. 23—-only to be overturned by Justice Secretary Simeon Datumanong.

The justice secretary ordered not one, but four cases filed against Liu.

Unresolved 

Smuggling too, though perhaps not of drugs, was believed to be the motive for the July ambush of Customs Deputy Collector Eduardo “Wewe” Lao. Two suspects, Lao’s own people at the Bureau of Customs, have been arrested for the still-unresolved ambush that also took as casualty Lao’s friend, appraiser Bennett Soreño.

That one’s friends can get you in trouble, meanwhile, is exactly the lesson National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents Lito Magno, Arnel Pura, Danilo Garay, Rey Tumalon and Teodoro Saavedra learned last May, when the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas filed multiple murder and attempted murder charges against them before the Mandaue Regional Trial Court.

The charge was in relation to the Dec. 13, 2002 incident, in which the five agents’ civilian assets allegedly strafed a Plantation Bay van that was ferrying five resort employees home from a party.

All five agents are out on bail and trying to get reconsideration for an administrative conviction that had all of them fired from government service.

Similarly fired from government service but still trying to argue that he be granted bail is ex-policeman Engilberto Durano, who is impleaded in three separate crimes: the kidnapping of Ryan James Yu, the murder of Rogelio Bacalso and the attempt on the life of Bacalso murder witness Lloyd Carampatan.

Carampatan, a teenager then, survived.

Still young 

Teenagers too were the two alleged victims of Fr. Apolinario “Jing” Mejorada, who, in January of last year, went to the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor and charged the priest with acts of lasciviousness.

Michael Gatchalian, an ex-Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño altar boy, together with Jun Ryan Duhaylungsod, said the priest fondled them in a movie house. Gatchalian said the incident against him was repeated a few months after in Bohol.

The Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor dismissed the complaint, questioning the boys’ real motives in filing it and hinting that the two weren’t all that innocent to begin with.

But innocent, definitely, was Salbert Samonte, the Tejero Elementary School pupil who died at the hands of still unidentified malefactors.
Samonte was slain with a rock inside the school’s own compound.
His teachers were placed under ombudsman investigation but were all cleared in a resolution issued last January.

As the year comes to a close, they whose duty is to put all they witness on paper may ask, what is to come?