He always wanted to be a lawyer and crime buster

Cousin Emmanuel Y. Velasco always wanted to be a lawyer. He came from a long line of them. His paternal and maternal grandpas were attorneys; so are his dad, former interior secretary and NBI director Epimaco Velasco, six uncles and two aunts; suffragist Natividad Almeda Lopez, the first female judge in Asia, was a grandaunt. For him lawyering would renew his youth activism for social justice. He took leave from reporter’s load in Malaya to enroll at the University of Santo Tomas where, he often enthused, Emilio Jacinto too went for pre-Law before the Revolution beckoned.

Manny always wanted to be in government service too — as state prosecutor and crime buster. When he declared so at the family cocktails to welcome him to the Bar, the lawyers tried to talk him out of it. They’d been there, risked lives, waived comforts, withstood bribes and intrigues, all for little wins and big letdowns. Manny wouldn’t listen. In his eyes they were heroes for slamming oppressors, capturing the most notorious outlaws, and defending the downtrodden. If following in their footsteps is a lost cause, then what’s wrong with another tilter at windmills?

Manny attacked his assignments at the justice department with gusto. Rising up the ranks to become senior state prosecutor, he came to specialize in cases of woman and child abuse, press freedom breaches, and terrorism. The terrorism cases were most frustrating and perilous, for Islamist kidnap-murderers in Sulu-Basilan increased faster than could be neutralized. A number of felons Manny hounded to jail sought reprisal. A judge whom he got convicted burdened him with all sorts of nuisance suits. Crooked lawmen whose extortion rackets he busted tried to get even via public smearing. An indicted politico incriminated himself by texting death threats from his mobile. Bullets etched with Manny’s name and barongs with black ribbons from anonymous senders became normal fare. He sharpened the skills of novice sleuths by tasking them to find out who the latest schemer could be.

Skill won most of Manny’s prosecutions. He had trained in international law in Sweden, drug-rehab administration in Singapore, criminal investigation in Japan, terrorism investigation at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and crisis management at the American University in Washington, D.C. Even-handedness and commonsense, honed in part in the Masonry, won him esteem even among respondents. Sternness with the uniformed leaders of the Manila Pen siege of 2007 (Antonio Trillanes IV, Danilo Lim, Nicanor Faeldon) and leniency with their aged civilian pals (Teofisto Guingona Jr., Francisco Nemenzo, Bishop Julio Labayen) earned for Manny their grudging admiration. One of his last newsy acts, in the wake of fiery elections in hotspot Cavite province, was to establish that armed NBI agents did reinforce the partisan Sen. Bong Revilla’s manor, then advise the blockading police platoon to get a court warrant to search for suspected unlicensed rifles.

Manny’s dad watched quietly from the sidelines as he performed. Epimaco is credited with smashing dozens of kidnap, robbery, and narcotics syndicates, foremost of which was supposedly indestructible Nardong Putik’s. He saw in his son the combined strengths of the lawyers in the family. But grizzled veteran that he was, Epi at least thrice mobilized kinsmen to counsel Manny to go slow on risky cases. Manny appreciated their concern. Still he persisted in special missions to pinpoint the military intelligence officers who abducted farmer leader Jonas Burgos, prosecute for cold-blooded murder Batangas governor Antonio Leviste, and indict the leftist-rightist coup plotters of 2006. Manny had been a national-democratic fighter against Marcos, won friends in the army while training in national security and reserve generalship and battling bandits and terrorists, but had to shunt thoughts and ties while in the government service. He had a job to do.

Despite his much-publicized heart-pounding case files, nobody knew Manny had a cardiac problem. Friends and family were shocked that, at 54, he suffered a massive heart attack early morning last Monday. He never made it to the hospital.

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Though holding the presidency of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou is not truly in control. His stridence against Manila, for the coast guard’s slaying of a Taiwanese marine poacher, arises not from inner resolve but press agitation. When in a trice of calm he pleaded against hurting Filipino workers in the island who had nothing to do with the killing, the mobs defied him. He could not even assure the safety of President Noynoy Aquino’s personal envoy, who wanted to visit the fatality’s family to convey the Philippines’ apology and condolence.

Ma was voted into a second term last year by a thin 51.6-percent majority. His reign has been shaky since. With the economy waning, his approval rating is a floor-mop 14 percent. He is so nervous of the media, which criticizes him for switching from anti- to pro-Beijing. He has just survived the storm from a pro-Beijing tycoon-pal’s attempt to gobble up a large anti-Beijing newspaper and broadcast network. Earlier, regulators had fined the tycoon’s smaller daily for running editorials paid for by China’s communist rulers. That paper presently is stirring up anti-Filipino sentiment.

The mauling of Filipinos in Kaohsiung and the attack on a female workers’ dorm in Taichung frayed Manila-Taipei ties. Ma is taking out on 87,000 innocent Filipino workers the refusal of their President to bow to him.

Ma, like the street maulers and dorm attackers, is a common bully. He didn’t have the guts to tell his people that their slain countryman’s steel-hulled poaching vessel had tried to ram the slightly bigger but mere fiberglass Philippine patrol craft, in Philippine waters. How can he be expected to muster the courage to tell the street gangsters to scram?

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