Thanks to cellphone contact, RHB leader yields

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan — Have cellphone, will surrender.

Mobile phones played a key role in last week’s surrender of a leader of the Rebolusyonaryong Hukbong Bayan (RHB) and four of his members.

It all started in 2002 when outgoing Mabini Mayor Alimar Briana gave a Nokia 5110 to RHB leader Teodorico Manzano, 36, alias Ka Omar, who got it from his father Victoriano, who is not a member of the breakaway communist faction.

When the handset was destroyed, Briana sent P5,000 via a bank account of Manzano’s friend so the RHB leader could purchase a new cellular phone to allow authorities to keep in contact with him in the mountains of western Pangasinan.

Since last December, Briana provided Manzano a weekly load of P600. Manzano said he would talk to Briana for 15 minutes but not on a regular basis since there was no signal in the boondocks. They became regular textmates, too.

Manzano admitted that he used the cellphone to communicate with other people, besides the mayor.

The constant communications paved the way to last week’s surrender of Manzano, who led the Sandatahang Yunit Propaganda Pangasinan of the Marxista Leninista Partido ng Pilipinas Rebolusyonaryong Hukbong Bayan; his wife Annie Estella, 21; Forman Manzano, 18; Herminio Manzano, 19; and Romy Garcia, 57.

Manzano said the difficulty of living in the mountains prompted them to finally give up. Besides, he confessed he wanted to live a new life now that his wife is five months’ pregnant.

During his stint with the RHB, Manzano said he experienced six encounters, four of them with government troops and the other two with combatants of the rival New People’s Army (NPA).

Briana said he came to know Manzano in a cellphone conversation in 2001. He was then a councilor.

Besides Briana, Senior Superintendent Mario Sandiego, Pangasinan police director, said credit for the surrender of Manzano’s group also goes to Senior Inspector Diosdado Ginez, police chief of Mabini town, and SPO3 Victor Ibarra, a non-commissioned intelligence officer who had made initial contacts with the RHB.

Sandiego also thanked Senior Superintendent Wilfredo Quintos, former head of the 106th Provincial Mobile Group, and the Army’s 24th Infantry Battalion led by Lt. Col. Emil Hulipas, which is under the 703rd Infantry Brigade headed by Col. Pedro Curva.