EDITORIAL - A useless list

The escape of Charlie "Atong" Ang and Yolanda Ricaforte we can understand. When they left for abroad, political turbulence was still heavy in the wake of People Power II. Also, there was still no court-ordered travel ban on the two individuals who are needed as witnesses in the corruption case against deposed President Joseph Estrada. Ang, once one of Estrada’s closest buddies, and auditor Ricarforte easily skipped town and settled in the United States.

But the escape of police Senior Superintendent Michael Ray Aquino and Cesar Mancao is another matter. The two had been on the hold-departure list of the Bureau of Immigration since they were implicated by a fellow police officer in the murders of publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito. Last week, however, the government learned that the two were in Canada. Mancao later confirmed the story, claiming he was "temporarily" staying out of the Philippines because he believed he would not get due process.

He would have served the cause of due process better if he had surfaced and given his side. Flight is also usually construed as an admission of guilt. To this day, despite the arrest of former members of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force for Dacer’s murder, investigators still do not know who ordered it and why. Aquino and Mancao, the highest ranking officers to be implicated in the double murder, could have shed light on the brains.

Because the police officers and their civilian accomplices who have talked point to an elaborate operation by the PAOCTF, suspicion has inevitably focused on the former head of the task force, Panfilo Lacson. Potential witnesses against Lacson, however, have a disconcerting habit of making a disappearing act, among them the policeman whose sudden departure for abroad led to the dismissal of the Kuratong Baleleng multiple murder case.

Such flights into exile would not be possible if immigration and airport personnel are doing their job. Surely personnel at the Mactan International Airport, where Mancao and Aquino boarded a Hong Kong-bound flight on their way to the United States, re-cognized two of the most trusted men of Lacson, who served for many years as constabulary-police commander of Cebu. At the rate potential witnesses in major cases are leaving the Philippines, all the cases will end up dismissed and unsolved. If high-profile persons can easily give immigration and airport authorities the slip, toilet paper has better uses than that so-called hold-departure list.