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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
IN the Thirteenth Congress, the Senate decided
to conduct a full-blown inquiry into the prevalence of the illegal
numbers game jueteng. The senators were concerned that the
proliferation of jueteng had resulted in the increasing corruption
of policemen and local officials.
The intention was serious, the hearing not
always so.
On his first day as witness in the jueteng
hearing, Richard Garcia spoke of a meeting among jueteng
personalities where he pushed down a table and drew his firearm from
his back and pointed it at the boisterous group.
“Parang si Lito Lapid ito ah! [This fellow’s
like Lito Lapid!],” exclaimed Sen. Manuel Villar, referring to his
co-chairman Sen. Lito Lapid. He was well-known as an action star
before he entered politics. To Villar, Garcia’s description of his
action in the meeting seemed to have come straight from a Lapid
action movie.
Villar was then head of the Senate Committee on
Public Order and Illegal Drugs. Lapid was chairman of the Senate
Committee on Games, Amusement and Sports. Some senators had wanted
Lapid to inhibit himself from the hearing because of his closeness
to Bong Pineda, one of the suspected “jueteng lords” of the
country, but he rejected these calls.
While Garcia gave the image of a toughie ever
ready to rumble, like Lapid, he presented a different persona when
he later appeared on television. On TV, Garcia shed copious tears as
he profusely apologized to the First Family and almost everybody
else who was involved in the Senate hearing on jueteng.
“Naging parang si Medel! [He has turned into a
Medel!],” somebody remarked.
Medel was supposed to be the police’s star
witness in the Nida Blanca murder case, but he later recanted his
testimony implicating Blanca’s husband in the crime. He wept and
flung his arms as he claimed he was tortured to name Rod Strunk,
Blanca’s widower, as the mastermind.
Garcia’s transformation from a Lito Lapid to a
Medel was just one of the comic reliefs in that Senate hearing.
Retired Gen. Restituto Mosqueda, the former
regional director of the Philippine National Police in Bicol, was
the soul of military severity and the most unlikely source of
lighter moments in the inquiry.
At the start, Mosqueda described himself as just
a poor man. However, when a senator mentioned his real-estate
properties, he explained that he was no longer poor because he had
retired as a general.
Mosqueda said he built a “nipa hut” in his
property in Alfonso, Cavite. He became sheepish later when it was
pointed out that his “nipa hut” had a floor area of 300 square
meters and a three-story high concrete building.
He also built a hanging bridge on his property.
Sen. Sergio Osmeńa 3rd showed a video footage of the hanging bridge
taken from helicopter and Mosqueda denied that it was his. He
claimed that the bridge in the video was “too long.”
When a close-up of the bridge was shown at a
lower and closer angle, Mosqueda nodded and admitted it was his.
Mosqueda had reportedly bragged that when he was
head of the Crame Crime Laboratory, he “saved” the Arroyo
administration by certifying that Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo was the
owner of the infamous multimillion-peso Jose Pidal account after
analyzing their specimen signatures. Arroyo, now congressman of
Negros Occidental, is the younger brother of the President’s
husband, Mike Arroyo.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson had claimed that Mike Arroyo
was the owner of the multimillion-peso bank accounts under the
fictitious name of Jose Pidal. When Iggy was called to testify
before the Senate blue-ribbon committee, he invoked his right to
privacy whenever he was asked details about the accounts.
Just like “Iggy,” Mosqueda also invoked his
right to privacy whenever he was questioned about his personal
assets. This prompted Osmeńa to quip that Mosqueda must have
idolized “Iggy” so much that he was parroting Arroyo’s answers
to senators’ questions.
“Absolutely!” Mosqueda replied, then after a
short pause, added, “No.”
The two last witnesses in the probe,
Michaelangelo Zuce and former Mayor Charito “Cherry” Abapo of
San Fernando, Masbate, also brought lighter moments to the hearing,
although Zuce—who must have weighed more than 400 pounds—was
definitely no lightweight. Zuce’s bulk was so huge that he could
hardly fit into the chair given him to sit on.
“Naluko ako ng dambuhalang mangungutong! [The
gigantic mulcter duped me!],” Abapo wailed to the microphone.
Abapo had lost his election bid for mayor in Masbate and claimed
that Zuce had conned him of P1.5 million to fix his electoral
protest.
Abapo called Zuce a liar, saying it was better
to be with a killer than with a liar.
“Where did you get that saying?” Sen.
Jinggoy Estrada asked.
“Narinig ko po iyan sa pelikula ni Erap. [I
heard that in an Erap movie, sir.],” Abapo said. Erap is former
President Joseph Estrada, a former action-movies leading man, and
father of the senator.
The hearings made a lot of headlines. They were
carried live on radio and cable television, but nothing came out of
them. However, this did not stop the Senate from conducting more
headline-hogging inquiries. Meanwhile, many of the jueteng witnesses
have gone back to anonymity after getting their 15 minutes of fame.
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