It was after 1 a.m. yesterday when controversial Iloilo businessman Melvin Odicta and his wife Meriam arrived at the Caticlan ferry jetty in Aklan. They were just getting off the ro-ro ferry after making the long journey from Batangas City when shots rang out in the dark.
When the initial confusion subsided, the Odictas were lying in pools of blood. They were taken to a local hospital, where they were declared dead on arrival.
This was no ordinary case of “extra-judicial killing,” as the opponents of President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war usually describe such incidents. Melvin Odicta, alias “Boyet” and “Dragon,” was allegedly the top drug dealer in Iloilo City and its neighboring areas—the most “shabulized” part of the country, according to Duterte himself.
Odicta was, according to sources in the city, under the protection of Iloilo City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog. Mabilog was named by the president as one of the most prominent public officials protecting drug syndicates, in a list he read in public recently; Mabilog is also a second cousin of Iloilo political kingpin Senator Franklin Drilon.
Odicta gained national notoriety last year, when he and his son, Melvin Jr., and Jing-Jing Espinosa, led a group of armed men in storming a local radio station which had been reporting about Odicta’s illegal drug ring. The Odictas and Espinosa, a barangay councilman who is believed to be the second-in-command of the elder Odicta, were caught in CCTV footage during the attempted raid of the offices of dyOK Aksyon Radyo Iloilo last November.
Were the Odictas killed at the Caticlan ferry port to silence them? It would seem so, according to sources that I interviewed in Iloilo.
The killings were certainly not perpetrated by rival gangs using Duterte’s anti-drug campaign as a convenient excuse to get rid of the competition, as the police have described some of the recent killings. According to veteran Iloilo journalist and blogger Manuel “Boy” Mejorada, the Odictas have already eliminated their main rival in the drug trade, an operation run by the Prevendido family.
In fact, Odicta has already “graduated” to legitimate businesses in Iloilo and was allegedly grooming the heavily-tattooed Espinosa to take over the local drug trade. Odicta is the operator of a big local taxi fleet named “Melvin” and runs an airport shuttle service, Mejorada said.
But the circumstances of the killing of the Odicta couple in Caticlan merit more than just passing mention. In fact, they had just come from Manila, where they met with Interior and Local Government Secretary Ismael “Mike” Sueno, to deny involvement in the Iloilo drug trade and to promise that they would identify the real narcotics kingpins and their protectors among the top officials of the city.
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Odicta’s lawyer, Raymond Fortun, had sought the meeting with Sueno, I’m told, so that his client may explain himself. Fortun said the meeting last Thursday was not a “surrender” by his client, but was requested by Odicta upon the recommendation of the Iloilo police; Fortun said his client was not in any list of drug dealers of the police and merely wanted to clear his name.
But PNP chief Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa laughed off Odicta’s denials, advising the businessman to “tell it to the marines.” The always-quotable Dela Rosa made the remarks on Friday, the same day that he advised drug addicts and pushers to kill the drug lords who are oppressing them.
“Who is he [Odicta] fooling?” Dela Rosa said in a speech before the Region 6 police. “Don’t you know that he is the drug lord and yet he denies it?”
That was how things stood when on Sunday night, the Odicta couple decided that they would return to Iloilo the same way they arrived: In four vans full of armed bodyguards and other hangers-on, by way of Batangas City, where they would load the vehicles in a ro-ro ferry across the inland sea to Caticlan, where the convoy would proceed by land to Iloilo City on the other side of Panay Island.
According to my sources, the Odictas often travel this way, not only because they employed very stringent security measures, but also because they did not want to ride airplanes, where they could easily be detected and followed. But this time, their trip to Iloilo was stalled in the Batangas ferry port.
When the four-van convoy was about to board the ferry, it was stopped by elements of the PNP Highway Patrol Group. Two of the vans, which were not being used by the Odicata couple, were offloaded because of the presence of armed men in them; the other half of the convoy was allowed to proceed.
The Odictas had just arrived at the Caticlan ferry jetty and were walking off the vessel before boarding their two vans when they were cut down. It is still unclear as of yesterday if their assailants were with them on the ro-ro ferry or if they had been waiting for the couple in ambush at the port.
Did the Odicta drug syndicate die with the murder of Dragon, who got his name from the dragon tattooed on his chest? What about the protectors of the Iloilo drug trade in government—will they get off the hook as well, now that Odicta is gone?
The people of Iloilo, who are still smarting from the “most shabulized” tag, will be watching the Duterte administration’s handling of this sensational case. The success of the entire anti-drug campaign of the government could hang in the balance.