This is what the DDS say: Rodrigo Duterte’s tough-on-crime stance was his defining achievement. There were “addicts who raped their own sisters, brutally killed their own mothers, and who committed atrocities only deranged minds can carry out,” angrily defends one Davao City pseudo activist. Duterte simply made communities safe, her ilk continue the Big Lie.
The falsehood has been relentlessly repeated that it has become the truth to those who want to believe it: Duterte eliminated the dregs of society
Did he? He didn’t.
Duterte’s state-funded Davao Death Squad killed for vengeance as it did to silence his enemies. His own children also used the DDS to punish those who disrespected their high sigâ stature in the city. If was their private army.
The following account is from the affidavit of Arturo Lascañas submitted to the International Criminal Court .
During the 1988 local election in Davao City, then appointed vice mayor Rodrigo Duterte ran for mayor against appointed mayor Zafiro Respicio. Mr. John G (a mall owner) was an avid supporter of Respicio. On one occasion during the height and heat of the election campaign, I personally asked Mr. Hans G for financial support for Duterte, then a candidate for city mayor. I knew that his brother John was supporting Respicio.
Mr. Hans told me that he would like to invite candidate Duterte for dinner at the ground floor restaurant of the mall. Duterte accepted the invitation, later rescheduled for a lunch meeting.
At the restaurant, the brothers G waited for us on a corner table near the cashier’s booth.
John told Duterte: ‘Rody, you are not suited to be a mayor. You should be a judge because you are a prosecutor!’
Duterte immediately stood up and walked away. Just before boarding his vehicle, he told us: ‘You asked me to come here only to be insulted by John G.’ Then he sped away in his car. Then the election came and Duterte won by a slim margin over Respicio. Again, when Duterte ran for reelection after three years, Mr. John G did not support him, although not openly.
One day, Major Macasaet told us that Mayor Duterte had ill feelings towards the G brothers, because he was insulted and shamed by Mr. John openly and in private on more than one occasion. Macasaet told us the mayor wanted to get back at Mr. John. He wanted to embarrass and shame Mr. John through his extramarital affair with Ms. Arlyn N, an employee of the mall.
Macasaet summoned us one day to relay an information from Mayor Duterte obtained through the mayor’s sources among the Chinese Filipino businessmen of Davao City. The information was that Mr. John rented an apartment somewhere in Marfori Subdivision as his possible love nest with Ms. Arlyn.
Several weeks of surveillance spotted Ms. Arlyn in the vicinity of Marfori Subdivision. She was standing along the road waiting for a taxi. Then again for the second time we spotted her on the same place. We then devised a plan to snatch the handbag of Ms. Arlyn, hoping that we could get some material evidence that could link Mr. John as her secret lover.
On the third time that we spotted her on the same place, we instructed a patrolman to snatch her handbag. The instruction was if she would resist, the patrolman would stab her once and run away towards the dark road going to the Davao Medical School Foundation where our vehicle was parked on the road side.
In less than 15 minutes, the patrolman rushed inside our vehicle, his hands and clothes full of splintered blood. He turned over to us some things he forcefully got from Ms. Arlyn. Inside her bag were two 2×2 ID pictures of Mr. John and Mr. Hans, and cash amounting to less than a thousand pesos. The patrolman (named Bobby Paurco) explained that the woman offered fierce resistance so he stabbed her several times. Then we dispersed.
Several minutes later, the Metrodiscom Operations Center reported that a dead body of a woman was discovered along the side road of Marfori Subdivision, with several stab wounds on different parts of her body.
Major Macasaet gave me P20,000 cash as my reward from Superman. Patrolman Paurco received the same amount. Several times after that, Mr. Hans and Mr. John would repeatedly ask me about the case of Ms. Arlyn. I always replied that it was a case of robbery-homicide under investigation.
The money for the murder operation came from the state. The car was the state’s, an unmarked police car most probably. The weapon was acquired by the state. The operatives were all state agents whose jobs did not consist of killing for vengeance.
The man who seethed with that vengeance to kill took an oath to follow the law.
Arlyn N was murdered because the pretext used was a drug war said to eliminate the scum of society. But the most worthless, undesirable scum was the man who ordered the killing to sate his grandiose sense of self and entitlement.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
