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Friday, October 22, 2004
Wenceslao: Mental calisthenics
By Bong O. Wenceslao
We talked about this after lawyer Arbet Sta. Ana Yongco, the private prosecutor in the parricide case against Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA) supreme master Ruben Ecleo Jr., was killed a few weeks ago. With such a big organization as the PBMA, some of its members must be adept at strategizing.
What if the PBMA constituted these strategists into a group with the sole purpose of acquitting Ecleo? And what if the strategy hatched included what some intelligence groups call “dirty tricks”? I mean, are the things happening the past several months but part of the grand design made by these strategists, including the killing of Yongco?
Before you accuse me of anything, I would say this is pure mental calisthenics. But I was drawn to it again after a police composite team pointed to Michel Favila as the main suspect in Yongco’s shooting. And Favila fits into this little “conspiracy theory” of ours, he being a PBMA member, or even a fanatical supporter of his “supreme master.”
The idea of a group tasked to map out a strategy to acquit Ecleo occurred to me when the Cedrick Devinadera case broke into the open. Devinadera, another PBMA member, claimed Ecleo’s wife Alona was killed by her brother with him (Devinadera) as accomplice. The recently suspended judge, Ildefonso Suerte, eventually convicted him.
The Devinadera case could not have been hatched and implemented had not a group of people worked on it. So, too, the killings, if it is true that PBMA members were behind them. The massacre of the Bacolods was apparently designed to intimidate Alona’s relatives. Arbet’s killing was to intimidate lawyers, prosecutors and judges.
Again, this is but mental calisthenics. For all we know, what has been happening since the Ecleo case started could just be knee-jerk reactions and not part of a sinister operating plan. The PBMA member who massacred the Bacolods in Mandaue might just be a fanatic out to protect his “master.” So too, probably, the killer of Yongco.
Still, it paints a picture of an organization that needs to rein in its people or one that miserably failed in teaching its members respect for democratic and judicial practices. As they say, an organization is only as good as its leaders.
If so, they are also to blame for the response of their members to the effort to prosecute their supreme master.
TEXTREAX. Here’s one from an apparently frustrated man, Jez Dizon of Sanciangko St., Cebu City: “Why does justice always succumb to the demands of Ecleo? He is too powerful we better change cardinals from Ricardo Vidal to Ecleo.”
From an unidentified texter, here’s a passage from Luke 12:4-5 addressed to all lawyers in the wake of yongco’s death: “Don’t fear those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But fear the one who, after the killing, will be able to throw you into hell.”
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ 0927-4912362)
(October 22, 2004 issue)
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