Kuratong Baleleng: Revered gangsters, vigilantes

By HERBIE GOMEZ
Editor in chief

(We are reprinting this story published in this paper and The Manila Times 15 years ago in view of the shooting deaths of Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog, his wife and their supporters in Ozamiz City on Sunday. The Times published this on  May 18, 2002.)

THE front-page photo of a Mindanao daily  shows a handcuffed young man in a white sleeveless undergarment crying  as he points to a friend. His name is Jhunjon Aldemita, 22 years old,  robbery suspect.

On Aldemita’s left is a stout, tough-looking man clad in a baby pink office polo barong.  His index finger also points to Aldemita’s 25-year-old friend Joseph  Anore, another suspected robber. Three other fingers are curled back  towards him, holding firm a pistol, still in its leather holster.

The pistol-wielding man is Reynaldo “Aldong” Parojinog Sr., the  mayor of Ozamiz, who is earning a moniker for himself as the city’s  “Dirty Harry”. He is also the titular head of the Kuratong Baleleng. The  group earned notoriety as a kidnap-foransom syndicate. But it is also  popular in Mindanao, where impoverished villages continue to provide  support to various local versions of Robin Hood.

Parojinog led policemen in arresting Aldemita and Anore,  suspects in last Friday’s Barangay Lam-an robbery. The two were the  latest in a long list of suspected petty criminals arrested in Ozamiz  raids led by Parojinog. The suspects’ crimes range from thievery to  illegal drug use and small-time drug pushing.

Parojinog believes these small victories would usher in a new era of peace and order.

Shortly before taking up his post in 2001, Parojinog vowed an  “all-out war” against criminals in Ozamiz. It was the same phrase used  by deposed president Joseph Estrada in his campaign against separatist  rebels.

A coincidence perhaps, but Parojinog is a known ally of Estrada,  even if seven years ago, 11 Kuratong Baleleng members were killed in  what human rights crusaders insist was a massacre carried out by  Estrada’s top aides in the now defunct Presidential Anti-Crime  Commission (PACC).

Panfilo Lacson, former PACC chief and now senator, says the men  were killed in a shootout. Police officers are hoping the Supreme Court  could allow the trial of the case, which many believe was whitewashed  under the Estrada administration.

Like his friend Estrada, Parojinog has been linked to crime as much as law enforcement activities.

Police have tagged the Kuratong Baleleng in assassinations,  robberies, drug trafficking, and high-level smuggling operations in  Mindanao and elsewhere in the country.

A government agent working under the Office of the President  leaked to this writer a 2000 intelligence report that linked the  Kuratong Baleleng to a plan to smuggle flat televisions and other  appliances into the country in time for that year’s Yuletide season.

The intelligence report said a meeting took place between then  president Estrada’s crony, Charlie “Atong” Ang and a leader of the  Kuratong Baleleng at the Jai Alai Fronton in Manila, where they  allegedly finalized the plan.

The intelligence report was leaked weeks after a military task force linked the Kuratong Baleleng to the illegal shipment of imported  rice and sugar at the port of Ozamiz.

Military officials at that time alleged that the Kuratong  Baleleng was collecting from smugglers a fixed fee for every sack of  sugar and rice.

In an inter-office memorandum, a customs official claimed  authorities had difficulties in carrying out anti-smuggling operations in Ozamiz because the city, at that time, was a haven of a mafia-like  crime group.

All these accusations were strongly denied by the Kuratong Baleleng leadership.

Ironically, the Kuratong Baleleng is well-loved and revered in Ozamiz City and Misamis Occidental.

Asked in 1999 how many members Kuratong Baleleng has, Parojinog replied: “Almost everybody here in Ozamiz.”

Mayor Parojinog inherited the leadership of the Kuratong  Baleleng from his father Octavio alias “Ongkoy”, who founded and turned  the organization into a vigilante group. Also called “Kuya” (Big  Brother) by residents of Ozamiz and Misamis provinces, Octavio was  assassinated while attending a cock derby in 1990.

Octavio’s other son, Renato, another revered Kuratong Baleleng  leader, met a similar fate when he was shot dead in Manila early this  year. At the time, Renato was a member of the Misamis Occidental  provincial board.

If Davao City and its neighboring provinces in southern Mindanao  had its Marcos-era Alsa Masa fighting the New People’s Army (NPA),  northern Mindanao, particularly Ozamiz and Misamis Occidental, had the  Kuratong Baleleng as an anti-communist vigilante group.

In a January 1999 interview, Mayor Parojinog, then the  representative of Ozamiz’s Association of Barangay Councils to the city  council, admitted that his father organized the Kuratong Baleleng with  the support of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ military intelligence  network.

He claimed there were many occasions when intelligence  operatives joined Kuratong Baleleng fighters in raiding suspected NPA  hideouts and other anti-communist operations.

Parojinog said the vigilante group was a brainchild of a certain  Gen. Tapia and a Maj. Calanog who saw his father as a potential leader.

Other sources said Marcos defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile,  also a close Estrada ally, gave Kuratong Baleleng his “blessings”.

Octavio was a feared yet respected man in Ozamiz, according to a  weekly newspaper publisher who claimed to have known the Parojinog  patriarch. The source also claimed to be a former member of the Kuratong  Baleleng. “The people of Ozamiz loved Ongkoy,” he said. “He was a local  Robin Hood.”

While many residents complained about rebel “revolutionary  taxes”, Parojinog boasted that his group distributed food to  impoverished Ozamiz and Misamis residents.

In return, Parojinog said people gave the Kuratotong Baleleng necessary information on the NPA.