You know a confession is fake when it rips off lines from some famous script, like from the Godfather Part II. Of course, as one almost-famous Yellow once said, it doesn’t have to be true— it just has to appear that way.
Of SPO3 Arthur Lascanas, formerly the bete noire of supposed Davao Death Squad whistleblower Edgar Matobato, little more should be said apart from what Senator Richard “Dick” Gordon already has. And this, in brief, is how Gordon reacted to the call for him to reopen his investigation in the Senate, now that Lascanas has done a 180-degree turn and admitted his participation in the mythical hit squad:
“He has already appeared before the Senate and he said the… Squad did not exist. Why should I call the committee again? How would I know if he is telling the truth this time?”
I reviewed Lascanas’ videotaped testimony during the Matobato hearings last year, given before Gordon and Senator Panfilo Lacson, and came away with the impression that he had truly been hurt by the alleged whistleblower’s claims of his involvement in the vigilante group. Then I watched his “public confession” at the Senate this week —which was not given at a real hearing, mind you—to compare the two Sergeant Lascanases.
Like Gordon, I wondered which of the two testimonies was actually true and if it will, at some future date, change again. And I wonder if Lascanas’ new testimony isn’t as fake as Senator Leila de Lima’s sense of outrage when I heard him talk about a four-year-old boy whom he wanted to spare but couldn’t, because the killers had to follow the Godfather script.
If you’re a fan of that classic movie series, you’ll know what I’m talking about. In one scene in Part II, the local mob boss orders the killing of young Vito Corleone after already having killed his father and brother; young Vito’s mother pleads for the boss to spare the boy, which the boss rejects, reasoning that Vito will seek revenge when he grows up.
This is the same story that Lascanas, now retired from the police force and reportedly a dialysis patient, wants us to swallow. That Duterte, as Davao’s mayor, ordered the killing of the entire Sapataha family, including a four-year-old boy whom Lascanas wanted to save but couldn’t, because he was ordered to make sure that the boy doesn’t grow up and demand Sicilian-style vengeance.
I am agog and aghast, as they say in Les Miz. No wonder Lascanas’ backers don’t want to file a case in court, as Gordon has suggested, but only seek an old-fashioned Senate hearing where he will be prodded, Matobato-like, to parrot more lines from a poorly written (or stolen) script.
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Speaking of bad scripts, how else to describe De Lima’s call yesterday for the members of the Duterte Cabinet to resign en masse but as yet another terribly unreasonable and unoriginal demand? De Lima, in another Senate press conference, said the Cabinet should quit because they should no longer support the alleged murderous dictator who appointed them.
Feel free to have a flashback of the Hyatt 10 resignations that the Yellow members of Cabinet pulled off in order to pressure then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to resign. Only make sure you remember that the Hyatt 10 stunt didn’t succeed in making Arroyo step down, either.
De Lima must really have lost her mind, as she attempts to come to terms with her impending arrest and imprisonment on charges of bribery and aiding and abetting drug trafficking in the New Bilibid Prison during her term as secretary of Justice. Either that, or she is still following some Yellow checklist on how to bring down a sitting president, a program that was first drafted and implemented during the 1986 revolt.
Of course, the checklist includes massive protest actions like the one that will reportedly be hatched on Feb. 25. Like Cabinet resignations out of supposed loss of confidence, using the Catholic Church as a battering ram, enlisting the help of “friendly” media, pressuring Washington to step in and remove a duly elected president and other favored Yellow methods of achieving regime change, “people power” protests are part of the entire package.
(I’m already familiar with most of the weapons in the Yellow arsenal. But the cribbing from the Godfather II script is a new one, I must confess.
That, and the fawning treatment given by some news outlets to the new lawyers of both De Lima and Lascanas, the veteran human rights lawyers from the Free Legal Assistance Group, or FLAG. Normally, you’d just mention the lawyers, not make them the subject of article-length write-ups; to me, that just sounds like you don’t have a real case, which is why you have to proclaim just how good your lawyers are.)
And so we hurtle along towards Saturday, when the most prominent Yellow politician of all, Vice President Leni Robredo, promises us a “dignified” protest against Duterte. I suppose Robredo, who will be the beneficiary of any successful attempt to remove the president, is already practicing how to act dignified this early.
I guess we shall soon see if all the noise generated by Robredo, De Lima, Senator Antonio Trillanes, the Liberal Party, Loida Nicolas-Lewis, former President Fidel Ramos, the Catholic bishops, the Yellow media, Matobato and now SPO3 Anthony Lascanas will be not only dignified but will also achieve their real goal: That of removing a president and installing yet another Yellow in his place.
Oh, wait: They already used that playbook in 2001, when they removed Joseph Estrada. Right?
