Nida: Sloppy police work / The Carlson suicide / End of an outlaw

For us the aging, the days and years of our youth were a blissful halcyon period. Then crime was a punctuation mark on the front page and not the howling headline it is today. We had not yet even recovered from the shock of Nida Blanca’s horrible murder November 7 – still unsolved –than when another celebrity Maria Theresa Carlson committed suicide last Friday morning by jumping from the 24th floor of her condominium residence in Greenhills, San Juan. It was awful, for we had followed the careers of both and they were lovely and funny. And yes charming and at times even enchanting.

We were still breathless when former Muslim outlaw turned ARMM governor turned outlaw again Nur Misuari seemingly ran amuck last November 19 as a result of which 113 lay dead in Jolo, Sulu. Misuari fled to Malaysia where Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, a former friend and protector, had him arrested. Then just last Tuesday, Velma Cinco, Comelec director for education and information, died from multiple gunshot wounds after two motorcycle-riding assailants gunned her down in a busy thoroughfare in Sta. Ana, Manila.

In God’s name, what’s happening to our country?

In our youth, crime was a distant rumble, as was social unrest. We had the Sakdal uprisings, the Colorums, the Tanggulans in the far-flung provinces, but they were guttering rebel torches easily snuffed by the wind and we never saw any of them. Now high-octane crime explodes right before our very eyes, almost at our doorstep, and nobody is safe walking alone late at night in the streets anymore. Social unrest is everywhere. The only thing that comes to mind from way, way back was the killing of Lillian Velez by her jilted suitor Narding Anzures. If I remember right, both were erstwhile child actors. That set off a big, big buzz for it was the only major celebrity crime that blighted an otherwise peaceful and even balmy period.

But let me get first to the murder of Nida Blanca. What sticks out here, outside of the macabre nature of the crime, and its many, misleading mirrors, is the utter ineptitude of the Philippine National Police. I have always maintained that the top officer-echelons of the PNP should have either been purged or resigned a long time ago, even before Mary ‘Rosebud’ Ong just recently exposed Camp Crame as the "headquarters" of the drug trade when Panfilo Lacson, now senator of the realm, was PNP head. I had also expected incoming DILG secretary Joey Lina to smash a balled fist into crime-ridden police ranks. When Mary Ong made her exposé, Secretary Lina vowed to undertake a thorough probe of the top police officers incriminated. But until now Secretary Lina, despite his many promises, has not yet delivered. I wonder why. Not a single drug lord hauled in. Why?

All right. The jury is still out on whether Philip Medel Jr. is the real killer or not after a blaze of agonizing histrionics Friday when he recanted his confession. Was he acting? Sen. Tito Sotto swears on a stack of bibles Medel was. But what about Medel’s accusation that he was abducted and tortured by the police, blindfolded for three days, forced to confess, his genitals banged about by electrodes, his wrists and lower legs mutilated. Now that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has taken over the Nida Blanca murder case from the police, Joey Lina, PNP director-general Leandro Mendoza and police director Nestor Gualberto, quondam head of Task Force Marsha, will have a lot of explaining to do.

Katherine "Kay" Torres, only child of Nida Blanca, hit it right on the nail when she accused the police of "sloppy" investigation and cast doubts on the credibility on the probe conducted by the PNP’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) headed by Gualberto. Expressing her relief at the NBI taking over the case, she said: "I believe no one should be spared from further investigation (referring obviously to Nida’s husband Rod Lauren Strunk identified by Medel as the mastermind) and such investigation must be conducted with a higher level of efficiency and accuracy."

Mention must also be made of the Department of Justice headed by Secretary Hernando Perez, whose name has been linked to rank and raunchy scandal these past weeks. Nani Perez, whose justice department has the ultimate focus and responsibility over crime, will have to tighten the noose on rampaging crime with more thorough probes and convictions. Otherwise, he will have a tough time getting the okay of the Commission on Appointments. I have always wondered what Secretary Perez’s real or actual relations with Mark Jimenez were and are. Jimenez is a wanted felon in the US and a fugitive from justice. Why is he still here, Mr. Secretary?

* * *

Maria Theresa Carlson’s leap to death in no mystery at all to those who have been privy to her turbulent marriage to former Ilocos Sur governor and congressman Rodolfo Fariñas.

A front-page story bylined by Leah Salterio and Juliet Javellana said it all in the first paragraph: "She tried to find help, but in the end nobody could help Maria Teresa Carlson against a powerful and ‘untouchable’ husband." Another paragraph reads: "He drove her into killing herself. Probably he was just pushing her so hard that she would kill herself and would not be accused of murder." Several times in the past, I had been tempted as a journalist to help rip the curtains wide open, and like the others help Maria Theresa Carlson. But somehow just one opportunity came and went–and I preferred to stick to my kind of writing–largely political writing.

That one opportunity dangled and was blown by the wind.

But I can tell you, the few times I saw Rodolfo Fariñas in person, particularly at Malacañang when I was President Cory Aquino’s press secretary, knowing as I did then what he was doing to Maria Theresa Carlson, I felt like retching. I despised the man.

Now he is quoted as saying: "If I had nay fault, please forgive me. But please do not feast on my wife. Make me a subject of your anger or vengeance but not my wife or my children. They have nothing to do with my public life and you have nothing to do with my private life." Sir, you’ve got a lot of nerve, a lot of gall, a lot of impudence, a lot of effrontery, a lotta bull. Forgive you? Your kind should be in prison. We the media have nothing to do with your private life? You must be nuts.

So many horror stories have been written about how you have treated rather maltreated Maria Theresa Carlson, and if what you did happened in the United States, where wife-battering is a serious crime, you should have long landed in the calaboose. But here you are a powerful politician, a big name in Ilocos politics, the ground you tread on feared by a lot of people. Your mere step and sally into a public plaza sends shudders all over the place. No, we are not feasting on your deceased wife. She is happy where she is now, forever exiled from your presence. Neither are we feasting on your children. They are completely innocent and should really be spared the dirty, grisly, horrendous fall-out from Maria Theresa Carlson’s suicide.

But your private life with your wife was and remains fair game for media.

And so is every public official’s private life, if that is littered with scandal, strewn with physical and moral abuse. That was what fallen president Joseph Estrada sought from media, no intrusion into his private life. But that too was impossible. Erap Estrada had no compunctions about the life he led, public or private, each wantonly blending into the other. And he was even proud of the many mistresses he had, his sybaritic life-style, his smoking, his drinking, his gambling. What did Estrada in was that his fingers were over-itchy. And he was caught many times with his fingers in the cookie-jar. He threatened many of us with waking up one day in the kangkungan.

The threat about the kangkungan was right on the barrelhead, except that it was Erap who landed there. Not his critics.

* * *

Nur Misuari. I had interviewed him many times. He seemed all right in the beginning– a dreamer, a fighter, a hero of Muslim Mindanao. When I interviewed Ninoy Aquino in exile, he had a lot of praises for Misuari, even said the Muslim warrior was one of the few leaders he respected. But something happened. President Fidel Ramos drew Misuari and his MNLF out of the battlefield, offered him peace, offered him the chair of the Southern Philippine Council for Peace and Development in 1996. And then for a song, he was easily elected governor of the ARMM. I asked him if the system would not just co-opt him, but corrupt him, enslave his warrior cult to the wickedness of bureaucracy, devour his ideals.

Misuari said no. He would continue to hold the torch up high, carve out not just peace but progress from the wilderness of Muslim Mindanao. But somehow I smelled the North Wind from afar, just waiting to pin Misuari into the ugly monsoons of power and with power money and with money a leap into the darkness which most Filipino politicians have negotiated. Look at the Spice Boys. Just three years ago, they were up there on the pantheon. Where are they now? At the Casbah, whooping it up.

Misuari lived too long. He should have died a warrior.