If President Marcos wants to preserve his credibility, he should fire whoever fed him the information that he deemed to be solid enough for him to announce that Zaldy Co had already been caught – “nahuli na” – in the Czech Republic.
Otherwise, BBM would be getting the full blame for the calamitous handling of that episode in the hunt for Co. Frustrated Pinoys are sighing that we’ve been April Fooled.
Someone obviously failed to do his/her homework, and made BBM look stupid – or worse, complicit in what certain quarters have long suspected to be nothing but a zarzuela of pursuing the resigned Ako Bicol party list congressman.
If BBM simply became overexcited by raw intel and blurted out to the nation in an online post unverified information, he can’t afford to admit it. This would verify the opinion long expressed in public by former president Rodrigo Duterte, that BBM is weak and no leader, unlike Ferdinand Senior.
As of yesterday, Malacañang was still on damage control. Palace press officer Claire Castro said that during BBM’s meeting with the envoys of the Czech Republic and France, Czech Chargé d’Affaires Eva Tenzin confirmed that Co had indeed been “detained” by Czech authorities before being released to France, where Co is said to be applying for political asylum.
Officials in the land of liberté, égalité, fraternité – a country that hosts the headquarters of both the dirty money watchdog Financial Action Task Force and Interpol – would need a different type of asylum if Co’s reported application is granted.
Unless the asylum bid is actually backed by the BBM administration or some influential allies.
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Someone dropped the ball, Akbayan party-list Rep. Chel Diokno commented. BBM can’t afford to look like he’s it.
From the start, suspicions had dogged the manhunt for Co, with people thinking it was all meant for show, The suspicions were reinforced by Co himself, in video messages that he released, in which he claimed he was told not to return to the Philippines by BBM’s (former?) favorite cousin, resigned House speaker Martin Romualdez.
Co has since stopped issuing further statements and has not authenticated the previous videos in which he implicated BBM himself in the flood control and budget corruption scandal.
You don’t know if the speculation about a fake manhunt is worse than the other one, which is that our fat bureaucracy has been sleeping on the job and is starring in a 2026 remake of the 1994 comedy “Dumb and Dumber.”
Equally worse is the departure for Prague forthwith of a top-level team led by no less than a Cabinet member, Fredderick Vida.
Why does the secretary of justice himself have to handle this? Don’t our embassies have enough competent staff to handle such matters?
Why couldn’t our embassy in the Czech Republic have verified first the status of Co before Vida took the first flight out of Manila? The cost to us taxpayers must have been prohibitive, in this period of soaring fuel prices and air fare, when the government is supposed to be on strict austerity mode.
But sigh… picturesque Prague must have beckoned.
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We still don’t know how Co managed to get from Point A (allegedly Portugal) to Point B (France) when both his regular and diplomatic passports are supposed to have already been canceled by Philippine authorities while an older one has expired. If he’s holding a long-term Portuguese visa, why didn’t he seek political asylum in that country?
The Czechs reportedly detained Co for insufficient travel documents, but turned him over to French authorities because of the asylum application.
Co reportedly couldn’t be held in Prague because there was still no Red Notice for him from the Interpol, which the BBM administration allegedly sought way back in November.
According to reports, the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime completed the required documentation only when Co had already slipped past Czech authorities. The PCTC is directly under the Office of the President. Its executive director, Maj. Gen. Romeo Prestoza, took over just this month from Anthony Alcantara, a retired Army lieutenant general who held the post since 2024. What was Alcantara doing all those months from November?
Even if the requirements for an Interpol Red Notice are supposedly “voluminous,” shouldn’t their submission have been given priority by the PCTC?
Despite a leadership change in the PCTC, the government can’t afford to carry out a manhunt for one of the nation’s most wanted in such a disorganized, slipshod manner.
Unless the manhunt is just for show, and the Marcos administration would happily let the French have indefinite custody of Zaldy Co, while his application for asylum crawls along.
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THANK YOU: My family would like to thank everyone who condoled with us in our period of profound grief over the passing of my mother Otilia. It will be a sorrowful Mother’s Day for us next week, but we find joy in the comfort and sympathy extended to us.