Jude Josue Sabio
PRESIDENTIAL Counsel Panelo and Justice Secretary Aguirre are in unison casting doubt on Edgar Matobato’s credibility by asking the question “why only now.” According to them, Matobato was placed under the WPP in 2014 under the then Justice Secretary de Lima, but no case was filed. But Panelo and Aguirre should put themselves into the shoes of Matobato.
In his testimony, Matobato said he was tortured for a week or so by his former cohorts but was luckily freed from captivity. Why he was freed was not explained during the hearing, as he was not asked. Neither was he asked about how he was tortured, and the extent thereof.
Needless to say, the torture would have crushed Matobato to the point of near surrender. Knowing personally the criminal behavior of his former sadist colleagues who, allegedly on orders of Digong codenamed Charlie Mike, killed nameless, simple folks like chickens in the thousand in Davao, Matobato must have realized that sooner than later he could be their next target of extermination in order to silence him forever.
Definitely, Matobato has the sharp instinct and savvy of a killer whose acute sense of danger is honed from his 50 hits allegedly carried out on orders of Charlie Mike. But it does not require high education to be a professional triggerman. If Panelo and Aguirre were to be in the shoes of Matobato, they would have done the same thing as he did, that is, go into hiding in Cebu, Samar, Leyte and then later seek refuge with the CHR and then the DOJ.
Panelo and Aguirre should only recall the gangster films or novels that they may have seen or read, for them to realize the precarious situation of Matobato. But if all their life they have not done so, they should belatedly they do it for much-needed enlightenment. For indeed, Davao City can be likened to the dreaded underworld of the Mafiosi, where death is just ordered by the crime boss to be swiftly and blindly carried out by his crime crew.
The thing is when Matobato was finally able to seek refuge with the DOJ in 2014, it was already election season. Vice President Binay, who was then nearly as popular as now President Duterte, was the one being pilloried in the Senate in what is considered to be the longest, unprecedented Senate investigation.
By then, the nation still had no interest in Digong. Although he made regular press statements in the unholy hours of the night or in the wee hours of the morning in Davao, the national media paid scant attention to him. This was even more so, because he declared his lack of interest to run for the President for a long time until his last minute substitution of the PDP-Laban candidate.
By and large, Digong was just a long-time mayor of Davao who may have reigned deadly supreme in his political turf, but was largely unnoticed in the national stage, except that there were lingering suspicious about the dreaded Davao Death Squad.
It could even be said that Digong’s flip-flopping decision to run for President was a conscious effort on his part. He knew the human skeletons resting in the sea or buried in the Laud quarry in Davao. He also knew of the ominous existence of Matobato who, at the sponsor of political enemies, could be emboldened to testify in media or in the Senate, as what is happening now, and could lead to a discovery of these skeletons.
Indeed, the long delay in the filing of his Certificate of Candidacy benefitted Digong and resulted in his “tsamba” victory, as he admitted. It effectively delayed the surfacing of Matobato and its adverse political effects, which, if not delayed, could have doomed his chances of winning. At that belated time, Sen. Trillanes attempted to destroy him by exposing his huge secret bank deposits. But it was too late already, there being no more time to do a hatchet job like the one against Vice President Binay.
This time, after Digong was able to luckily come out unscathed in his victory, Panelo and Aguirre are harping on politics as the real motive behind Matobato’s testimony. But, of course, there is always politics inherent in all this dreadful drama currently unfolding, because Digong is an active political actor involved in politics ever since he became a mayor in Davao City.
It is part and parcel of the dynamics of politics, which is the art of acquiring power, that what could have been done during the campaign period against Digong is being done right now. But from a legal standpoint, it is plain to see that the matter just involves thousands of murders, which should be investigated, more so for having been committed by no less than the President of the country.
In a case of murder, politics is not a defense. If a politician is accused of killing a person, it is not a valid defense to say that his political opponent protected the witness in coming out to testify. In the face of a positive eyewitness who is not forced or paid, a defense that politics is behind the witness is futile. The positive eyewitness account will prevail over the lame excuse and could lead to a conviction.
Above the noise and sound of partisan politics, Matobato’s testimony pertains, first and foremost, to a sordid case involving a thousand murders committed seemingly by a serial killer. As pointed out by Matobato, police authorities were used to commit the atrocities in the name of public safety. But from the looks of it, politics is undeniably emerging as a benign instrument for revealing the horrible truth and meting out justice to the nameless, countless victims.
In this quest for truth and justice, the question begs an answer. Is the testimony of Matobato rendered unbelievable, just because it is only now that he is giving testimony? Let us take a common situation, where a person is killed under mysterious circumstances and a false witness testifies identifying positively a suspect who is jailed on account of such eyewitness account. But, fortunately, after a long time, a new witness surfaces confessing his guilt and pointing to the specific location of the victim’s skeletal remains. A police investigation reveals the skeletal remains to be exactly where the witness says it is. A DNA test on the remains confirms the victim’s identity.
In that kind of situation, Panelo and Aguirre cannot argue, as lawyers worth their salt, against the defense claim that the witness’ new testimony legally compels the reversal of the conviction and the inevitable release from jail of the falsely convicted felon.
Matobato’s testimony is precisely that kind of newly discovered evidence. By no stretch of the imagination can he be considered as a “recycled” witness, as misleadingly claimed by Speaker Alvarez, because Matobato has never testified before in any formal proceeding.
In fact, for more than two decades, in the case of the Davao Death Squad, there has been no material witness known at the national scene against the thousand murders, obviously because no DDS member has had the guts to pin down Charlie Mike and his dreaded crime crew, for fear of horrible retaliation by death. It took a torture of Matobato for him to finally have the courage to spill the beans on the DDS.
Incidentally, the Richard King murder seems to fit in with the example, for based on accounts of Matobato, it is very probable--and it should be seriously looked into--that the now-detained police general, who roundly professed innocence after his surrender, appears to be a mere fall guy in a grand cover-up hatched by the DDS who even killed the real triggermen to silence them forever.
Indeed, Matobato’s testimony could shed a new, truthful light on the real circumstances and true perpetrators of this Richard King murder alleged to have been ordered by Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte. After all, this appears to be just a part of a case of a thousand murders fit to be called a “killing spree.”
Apart from its unavoidable political color, what with the political world where it is inextricably linked, Matobato’s testimony has the compelling effect of portraying, in graphic details, the real, dreadful criminal hits carried out by the DDS members like a real Mafiosi crime crew allegedly on orders by Digong codenamed “Charlie Mike” acting like a real Mafiosi boss heading his Mafiosi crime family. Ultimately, his testimony should lead to convictions.
It just so happens that Matobato is testifying against the man who is now the President of the country still enjoying immense public support as a populist leader. But populist appeal should not detract from the fact that Matobato’s testimony generally shows a pattern of behavior, if not public policy, characterized by a contemptuous disregard of the sanctity of human life that Digong is capable of replicating on a nationwide basis.
It is Matobato’s vital testimony that has set the initial stage for providing a shocking visual, as if through the lens of a national microscope, of the malaise that has engulfed Davao City for a long time, and that hopefully will pave the way for enlightened politics to stop the malaise from infecting and spreading out to the whole country.
(Jude Josue Sabio is a lawyer from Misamis Oriental.)
