Baktin and the bounty

RYAN Yu, alias "Baktin," is just one of the many carnap artists borne by a uniformed sow that mated with a boar that issues license plates. By many accounts, this piglet used to be nursed by a politician from Surigao and that explains why he knows many politicians in the process. Pardon the personification, it is intended.

Early on he was taught the alphabet and learned quickly how to spell the names of politicians and then to pronounce them too. This little pig grew up to be wise and savvy with things he fancies.

Nothing was heard of his childhood but one thing is certain, he never went to any monastery to strengthen his faith but he surfaced later peddling cars. But the cars he peddled were of questionable source. When it was fashionable to smuggle cars through the Bureau of Customs (BOC), he can pull the trick by dropping names of influential people, among them politicians.

It is of no big surprise, therefore, that he liberally used the name of Polong Duterte to carry out his caper. I heard that he got a beating from Polong when the latter learned of this perversion. That incident made him scarce from the public view in Davao.

When the BOC finally stopped examining cargos outside the confines of the Davao Customs zone, hot items among them cars, rice and ukay-ukay and smuggling was no longer a luxurious affair, Baktin started touching base with the growing carnap industry in Manila. He was quick to establish connections as he knew his way around.

For as long as he remains to be the marketing conduit, he is safe from being salvaged like the fate that befell the delivery drivers who had to be silenced when the well intentioned law enforcers are closing in on their quarry.

The carnap syndicates work the same way as the drug mafia. Like the drug lords who were able to set up a clandestine laboratory in Daliao, Toril before Baktin put up a "casa" for the vehicles he carnapped not to repair them but to tamper with the chassis and engine numbers.

If you think those killed in the carnap chases in Metro Manila are the Mafiosos themselves, then you are gravely mistaken. They are merely the delivery boys. In the elaborate web of drug syndicates they are the equivalent of drug pushers. They are conveniently salvaged to silence them. By whom? That will be a stupid question to ask.

Pity Etta Rosales, the chair of Human Rights Commission. She blabbers a lot in passionate condemnation of Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte's offer of reward for the head of Baktin. Baktin obviously has graduated from just being a salesman of stolen and smuggled cars he is his own operator with his own link to the main supplier of carnapped vehicles, his own marketing arm with outlets in Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Surigao and Davao. As such, he is armed to the teeth and Ms. Rosales should make no mistake of treating this hog like a piglet as his alias implies.

The maze of the underworld is far complicated than a jigsaw puzzle. The last time former CHR chair Leila de Lima ventured to solve the so-called extra-judicial killings in Davao City she ended up empty handed. Why? Because she was venting her ire and focusing her drive on the wrong person and attributing the killings to the fabled Davao Death Squad which was non-existent.

Etta should not waste time quibbling on Duterte's offer of bounty. So many dead bodies litter the streets of Metro Manila. They have been silenced for the likes of Ryan Yu to rise again from the ashes of the other Baktins. And for as long as the lord of the carnap rings remains safely ensconced in his camp there will be more Baktins even after Ryan's head had been paid for by Digong.