The Office of the Ombudsman, which is now headed by a REAL Ombudsman, has decided to reverse a decision by pseudo-Ombudsman-Merceditas Gutierrez and filed murder cases against ten Philippine Navy personnel at the Sandiganbayan. This is the protracted case of Navy Ensign Philip Pestaño, whose death in 1995 was claimed to be a suicide according to the Navy personnel with him on the BRP Bacolod City. In August 2010, Gutierrez in all her dearth of wisdom and common sense, dismissed the murder cases filed by Pestaño’s parents, who never believed their son committed suicide, against the said Navy personnel who they believed murdered their son and covered it up with a suicide scenario.
I have been following the Pestaño case whenever it is brought out in the public, whether by media or by the parents of Philip themselves. And with everything that has been presented, I just cannot believe how suicide could be accepted as the most possible explanation for this very promising Navy man’s untimely death. It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to say that this was murder. A rookie out of detective school will not miss all the facts that point to foul play! So what does this make Merceditas Gutierrez, as if we have missed all the derogatory adjectives we can attribute to this Ateneo Law graduate? Shameful, to say the least! Utterly shameful!
Questionable wounds, none of which show that a gun was placed anywhere close to the head of the victim. Differing bullet trajectories between the head and the wall? Blood spatter inconsistent with suicide? And he borrowed someone else’s gun to kill himself when he had one of his own? A lengthened journey between the two ports, inconsistent testimonies, the list goes on and on! All this, insufficient to make a case for murder under the watch of Merceditas Gutierrez? Unbelievable!
Pestaño was going to the authorities with what he saw were illegal acts being committed by his superiors and who knows who else. But he was the only true Navy personnel on that boat that day. The rest were criminals in uniform and bargain-basement soldiers with cheap prices for their complicities. He was murdered, and it took them a while, an hour and forty-five minutes more or less, to make it look like he killed himself! Too bad, or in this case, good that they were idiots. His family did right in not relenting in their pursuit of justice. They sent their son to the premier military academy of the country, or is it? Seems more and more graduates have been found wanting of their oath to serve with honor. Only to be killed by the very people he would call comrades-in-arms! People he was supposed to serve worth honor.
I am very thankful that real justice is finally churning its wheels for Ensign Philip Pestaño. I just hope that those guilty get what they rightly and equally deserve. They have snuffed out the life of probably the very person who could have restored honor to the military. All because of greed, all because of stupidity. May they burn in hell for this! All of them, including those who will be revealed as the ones behind that which Pestaño wanted to expose!