Thou shall bear false witnesses

What do we do with a man like Richard Garcia? First, he swears to senators that his collections as jueteng bagman go to Gloria Arroyo’s spouse, son and brother-in-law. Weeks later, he wails in a press conference that Sen. Panfilo Lacson et al only put him up to implicate the First Family.

Lacson dismisses the rap by saying he expected Garcia’s turnabout all along. Legislators advise that persons who foisted the Senate’s false witness against the Chief Executive be sued for inciting to sedition. Ms Arroyo adds that Garcia’s revelation proves a conspiracy to malign her. Still, what do we do with Garcia who now tells us to trust him? There ought to be retribution for lying under oath.

For now, Garcia’s chastisement is to be lumped with other big liars of our time: Sgt. Vidal Doble, Udong Mahusay, Ador Mawanay. Yet they too, apart from being shown for what they are, have eluded punishment.

Doble is the army spy who illegally bugged election officer Virgilio Garcillano. He admitted as much in annotating the "Hello Garci" wiretap CD, in which the President’s unmistakable voice got taped 15 times. He also joined last June what Opposition men billed was the start of an EDSA-type uprising against Ms Arroyo. When it fizzled out, he beeped phone signals to his wife about being kept against his will at a Makati seminary. Apprehended by superiors, he now swears that retired NBI deputy Samuel Ong merely paid him to videotape a script for P2 million. Not even top celebrities command such hefty talent fee for a five-sentence spiel. Yet Doble, once assigned to Lacson’s infamous Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, expects us to believe him.

Udong Mahusay was a neighbor and employee of First Gentleman Mike Arroyo. Passed up for office promotion in 2003, he ran to Lacson to expose an alias Jose Pidal bank account. While under Lacson’s custody in Tagaytay, he phoned siblings his location. "Rescued" by another neighbor, Sec. Mike Defensor, Mahusay then claimed that Lacson’s armed goons were about to liquidate him. To date he has not been made to explain which of his two conflicting tales is true.

Ador Mawanay in 2001 volunteered information to the press on newly elected Lacson’s secret deposits in America. Referred to Intelligence Service-AFP chief Gen. Victor Corpus for witness protection, he passed two lie detector tests by the NBI to testify in the Senate. ISAFP later booted him out for conning soldiers and fellow-witnesses in cell phone sales. Mawanay promptly jumped to Lacson’s camp, claiming he was only coached to put down the senator. As three Senate committees have yet to come up with a report on Lacson, so too have they failed to make Mawanay account for fooling them.

Adding to the perdition of Garcia, Doble, Mahusay and Mawanay is their obvious common denominator: Lacson. The latter, as a PNP general in 1999, was found to be intriguing against then-chief Roberto Lastimoso. To dispel embarrassing murmurs, he vowed to turn down any promotion as the next director-general. In 2000 he also branded politics as so dirty he’d never enter it. Lacson perhaps has not heard Lincoln’s counsel that "no man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar."

It turns out that Garcia was not an original jueteng witness of Bishop Oscar Cruz. He disclosed that Lacson had recruited him and Wilben Mayor – for a fee – to hold "press exclusives" and then "volunteer" to Cruz to vilify the First Family. Lacson kept denying in June that he had arranged those press meetings. Now he says he did so after all, in effect admitting he has been using Cruz’s anti-vice crusade all along for political ends.

Doble’s wife and mistress corroborate the P2 million paid by Ong, who campaigned for Lacson’s 2004 presidential bid. Did hefty fees tantalize as well Mahusay to rat on his benefactor-neighbor, and Mawanay to dupe his protector-general? We can assume so, given Lacson’s record as police officer of "solving" crimes not through meticulous gathering of evidence but with tempted or tortured confessions.

Consider these other items. On his deathbed, hit man Kit Mateo confessed on videotape to murders committed on Lacson’s bidding. He retracted when his family was given a huge sum to ease the pain of his imminent demise. To this day a police officer avers that, also for a huge sum, he kept quiet for years about a heinous crime. On Lacson’s order, he had brought two kinswomen of a communist urban guerrilla leader from water torture in Antipolo to execution by a fellow-cop in Cavite. Too, a journalist explains why he destroyed photographs of the slain, hogtied Kuratong Baleleng robbers in 1995. Lacson gave him a jeepney to echo the line of a police shootout.

Municipal election chiefs Ferdinand Gerardo and Gilbert Palogan now complain of armed stalkers. This, after they resisted bribes from retired police Gen. Julius Yarcia, a Lacson lackey, to fabricate testimonies and evidence of poll fraud. Too, Butch Paquingan, a political operative of two Opposition senators, also tells why his Malacañang pal Michaelangelo Zuce now claims to witnessing payoffs to poll officers in the Arroyo house. Zuce spoke to him of millions of pesos to defect from the President. Lying for money has come into vogue, it seems.

So, what do we do with men like Garcia, Doble, Mahusay, Mawanay – and Lacson? Having escaped prosecution for perjury, they set a perilous example for individuals and society that lying pays – and pays well. Let them be warned, though, by the words of George Bernard Shaw that "the liar’s punishment is not that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else."

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