Go’s special privileges illegal – Palace

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang warned yesterday that the special privileges reportedly accorded to convicted killer Rolito Go by officials of the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City violate the law.

The Palace said the government is determined to keep Go in jail.            

“The authorities have to do their job. Providing special treatment to Go, an inmate, is against the law,” Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. told Palace reporters in a briefing.     

The other day, the family of road rage victim Eldon Maguan, whom Go shot dead over a traffic spat in 1991, asked President Aquino to order an investigation on reports that the convict has been seen going “in and out” of the NBP for the past four months.

The Maguan family said they were informed by Go’s fellow inmates that he is again enjoying special privileges, including going home to Quezon City every time he needs to go on hospital visit for chemotherapy.

Last year Go, a big-time government contractor, claimed he had colon cancer following checkups for recurring stomach pain and constipation. 

The Maguans learned that Go is allegedly sometimes escorted by a jail guard to a hospital in Quezon City before proceeding to his residence for lunch. He reportedly leaves the house late in the afternoon.

“He had been doing this for the past few months,” the Maguans said in a statement.

Then 43 years old, Go’s car made a counter-flow on a one-way portion of Wilson street in Greenhills in San Juan, nearly bumping Maguan’s vehicle. Go got out of his car and shot Maguan, then a 25-year-old engineering student of De La Salle.

In 1993, Go was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Pasig court, but he bolted the Rizal Provincial Jail three days before his conviction. He was arrested in 1996 at a pig farm in Pampanga.

In 2009, the convict was moved out of the maximum security area of the NBP, prompting an outcry from the Maguan family. At the minimum security area, prisoners are allowed to move around without escorts.

The Maguans alleged that despite Go’s imprisonment at the NBP, his business activities – from money lending to mining – remain operational to this date.

Aside from visiting his doctors and the office of his lending business in Soldiers’ Hills in Muntinlupa, Go reportedly goes out of prison to check on his mining company’s operations.

In August last year, Go was again discovered missing from the NBP. He claimed he and his nurse-nephew were kidnapped and brought to Batangas, but were released hours later.