Echaves: Gypped

I HOPE he has received his retirement pay and benefits.”

Those were my thoughts when I heard about SPO3 Arturo Lascañas’s reversing his October 2016 testimony.

On the Davao Death Squad (DDS) and its salvaging ops, Lascañas had said DDS was just “media hype.”

This time around, he said the DDS does exist.In fact, he was already a DDS member in 1989.

What happened in the interim from Oct. 3, 2016 to Feb. 20, 2017? Well, Lascañas retired from government service on Dec. 16, 2016.

Lascañas, though, cites the sting of conscience, perhaps some catharsis he prefers to call “spiritual renewal.”

Of course, that drew the ire and triggered pontifications from Sen. Manny Pacquiao not to take the phrase “spiritual renewal” in vain. Fortunately, he spared us from launching into a scholarly treatise on the topic.

The honorable senator, however, asked Lascañas, “May nagbayad ba sayo? Baka ikaw nagagamit ka lang din.”

Din? Did Pacquiao refer to Edgar Matobato, the self-confessed hitman who testified at the Senate hearings last year on DDS and extra-judicial killings?

Or did Pacquiao refer to himself? Hasn’t he been fronting for kindred spirits in the Senate to effect the ouster of Sen. Leila de Lima from chairing the Senate committee on justice? And pushing out de Lima’s Liberal Party colleagues from various leadership posts?

Also, the same man eyeing the presidency in 2022? This must be why he’s being very visible. Well, that’s not enough. He could start with better homework so that his inputs are substantive enough for the Senate floor, rather than fodder fit for sit-coms.

More shocking than Pacquiao’s antics were the revelations about the names of some victims, the collateral damages, and the rates to finalize the liquidation contracts.

Lascañas said some 500 were liquidated, including the 300 he had personal knowledge of. For each of the hits, the contract amount was between P 20,000 and P 100,000 depending on the status of the target.

For instance, Jun Pala, a vocal critic of the Duterte administration, had a P 3 million price on his head.

Someone texted to me, “Wow! Those killers were raking a fortune!”

The human being is priceless, and so is the human body. If it must have a money value, its price would be at least $45 million! And that’s just for four components --- the bone marrow, DNA, lungs, kidneys and heart. This, according to DataGenetics in the Internet.

Aha! Despite hit jobs by the millions, Lascañas, Matabato and their fellow DDS members were actually gypped!

If those 500 victims only had the alternative of donating their organs, their lives could have ended nobly, and their families consoled, knowing that their own sacrificed for others.

Qualified donors among the victims could have spared the sick from scrounging for P300,000 to 800,000 for their kidney or liver transplants.

Rather than have meaningless deaths at the hands of butchers.

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