The International Criminal Court had assessed former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office general manager Royina Garma if she qualifies as a witness against former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. The preliminary assessment interviews took place in Manila and then in Malaysia. Garma passed the test. She will testify against Duterte in his case for crimes against humanity in The Hague.
How did this happen? Garma had already met the ICC representatives in Manila. Upon her return to Manila from the United States where she attempted to seek political asylum (which was denied), Garma left for Malaysia to continue the ICC assessment interviews.
Justice Secretary Jesus Remulla’s statement was telling: The best way to protect Garma is for her to meet with ICC officials abroad, he said, “because her life can be in danger in our country.” Evidently, it was the national government that facilitated her trip to Malaysia. That is a plain manifestation that up until today, the Marcos Jr. government is cooperating with the ICC in bringing to fruition the case against Duterte.
Remulla had also revealed: “Given the fact that she’s going to Malaysia to meet with the ICC, it gave us reason to say okay because if she’s going to be a witness to the ICC, we have said that our working relationship with the ICC involves witness protection.”
The assessment of former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who was the first to file a supplemental complaint before the ICC in 2017, was that the tribunal had considered Garma’s knowledge of the Davao Death Squad infrastructure as crucial, substantial and necessary for the successful prosecution of the ICC case against Duterte. Trillanes admitted to this writer that he helped facilitate Garma’s encounter with the ICC representatives.
Trillanes also disclosed in our meeting in Brussels this last weekend that Garma had hoped to seek political asylum in the Netherlands. The Netherlands denied the request, just as it did to the previous whistleblowers for the Duterte case. The reason: the standard practice of the Netherlands is to deny asylum for seekers who have committed documented crimes, especially those related to violations of human rights.
The former Davao Death Squad hitmen Arturo Lascañas and Edgar Matobato were not exiled to the Netherlands but in third countries.
Some voices of doubt on the new ICC witness remain. Admittedly, Royina Garma’s is a curious case. She had just been issued an arrest warrant, together with her police accomplice Edilberto Leonardo, for the 2020 murder of former police general Wesley Barayuga. At the time of the murder, Garma was general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office. Barayuga was the secretary of the PCSO board.
The Barayuga murder was not inconsequential. He was credited for cleansing illegal operators of small-town lottery. That trickled down to the illegal gambling operators in Central Luzon and the Visayas. The National Bureau of Investigation was about to open investigations and Barayuga was set to testify. That was the reason Garma wanted him dead.
She then assigned him a PCSO service vehicle so that she could track his movements. While he was being brought home in the assigned vehicle driven by a PCSO driver, the assassination took place in a Mandaluyong street in broad daylight. Garma released P300,000 to the gunman.
Garma was not a nobody to Rodrigo Duterte. He appointed her to the PCSO even if she still had ten years of service in the Philippine National Police. In her testimony before the House of Representatives’ Quad Committees, Garma intimated she was very close to Bong Go and that she could just weave herself in and out of Malacañang when Go was special assistant to the president. “I can see the president anytime.”
The common belief was Garma was placed in the PCSO to use it as a milking cow for the Duterte administration’s corruption architecture. After Duterte appointed her to the PCSO in 2019, the PCSO lost some P80 billion in revenues. She hired several family members in the agency. She was discovered to have funneled P2 million to a party list she had organized. Her ex-husband Roland Vilela, who Duterte appointed as police attaché in the US, was discovered to have gotten P50 million from PCSO money.
In November 2023, when I had the opportunity to interview face to face the former Davao Death Squad head hitman Arturo Lascañas in his country of exile, he added more intimate details about Garma. Lascañas knew the entire killing machinery of Mayor Duterte. When Bong Go asked Duterte to have his own death squad, Garma and Leonardo were assigned under the new Bong Go Death Squad.
Perhaps that is the reason why Go had been distancing himself from the Garma issue in the PCSO. Trillanes, the main focal person in the Duterte case in the ICC, said that aside from Bato dela Rosa, Bong Go will also be in the next round of arrest warrants to be issued by the ICC to the Interpol.
The question in everyone’s mind then is: How can Garma testify in the ICC once she serves jail time for the murder of Barayuga? The crime of murder is non-bailable.
Government will have to hit two birds with one stone – hold Garma accountable for the crime of murder, yet facilitate her testimony in the ICC.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
