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Friends know Amadeo Ducat as a do-gooder with an eye
for publicity stunts.
Ducat had built a nursery school
to give a start to the children of desperate slum dwellers who
inhabit a drugs- and crime-blighted sliver of foreshore on Manila
Bay called Parola.
Neighbors and associates
described Ducat as a moderately successful businessman and building
contractor who maintains a house in the upscale gated community of
BF Resort in Parañaque City.
Ducat is said to own lands both
in Manila and Cavite as well as a construction company called
Lebelado Construction.
A son of the suspect, Buboy
Ducat, told reporters his father had been railing about poverty and
dirty politics and wanted his voice to be heard.
“I don’t have an idea why he
did this,” the son said.
Sen. Alfredo Lim, a former Manila
police chief, remembers taking Ducat into custody after the
businessman held hostage two Catholic priests in the San Roque,
Manila, in 1987 over a building contract dispute.
The priests, identified as
Monsignor Tomas Gonzales and Fr. Ruby Tolibas, were later freed
unharmed and Ducat, who had used fake grenades, was charged. But the
case failed to finish, Lim said.
Manila police said Ducat also had
to be persuaded to climb down from the top of the Welcome monument
on the Manila-Quezon City boundary in 1995 during a publicity stunt
to get the government to ban Chinese-Filipinos from running for
public office.
Both Lim and Sen. Ramon
“Bong” Revilla Jr., who went inside the bus during the crisis to
negotiate the release of one of the children, said they were
confident the hostage crisis would end peacefully. Ducat did not
disappoint them.
Ducat has said he has with him 39
land titles for land he owns in Cavite that he intends to give to
the parents of the children on the bus.
He also has political ambitions.
During the 2004 election he ran for congressman of the Third
District of Manila and lost.
--AFP and Katrice Jalbuena
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