Is People Power In The Offing?
By: Atty. Marlo T. Cristobal
In our commentary of the same title (bylined Catalyst) that came out of the website of the Banateros, banateros.com, last June 18, we stated that the PNP leadership and other high government officials had been denying their overbearing force and violence they inflicted on both the properties and persons of members of the KOJC. The clear, detailed video footages of their raid and ravage on the KOJC premises is as clear as the sun, yet they denied their total lawlessness the KOJC videos depicted in exuberance. We do not feel any comfort resorting to legal gobbledygook when we are addressing the people in general. But our attempt at clarity compels us to do so this time.
The video footages are pieces of evidence our Rules of Court uphold, and the courts are bound to accept them if properly testified to. Videos and pictures fall under what we call in evidentiary rule, Res Ipsa Loquitur (“the thing speaks for itself”). Thus, the video footages speak for what they show. They are legitimate and genuine evidence of the incidents they show as the facts and the truth of the KOJC raid and ravage last June 10, the day of infamy for the Davaoenos, and indeed for all the decent and law-abiding sectors of our populace.
These brazen acts of lying and denying about the videos’ clear depiction of lawlessness, plus the lying all around in government service, specially on issues of corruption, as we admonished in our aforesaid commentary, “look at the actions and talks of every lawmaker in our Congress and every official and agencies of the Executive branch of our government, and see all the lies reeking!,” led me to conclude that our society had gone Satanic, for our society had indeed thoroughly embraced the ways of Satan, who “never stood for the truth,” is a liar and the father of lies.
To this day, this lying openly in public, persists, and, in fact, now in its “golden age” in the tradition of history’s concept of “golden age,” in its peak, in its highest points, in abundance, in its significant dimension. From top to bottom of the government hierarchy, lying rears its ugly head. From the President’s SONAS which are chiefly removed from reality and the truth, and the PNP leadership and its men publicly declaring matters that are in direct contrast with what the video footages clearly depict, gives us the impression that lying is now a national policy.
In a letter of July 29, 2024 to Major General Rommel Francisco Marbil head of the Philippine National Police (PNP), VP Sara Duterte, addressing him only as plain “Rommel”(to us, a manner of addressing that is fraught with unpleasant meaning), accused the General of clearly lying in no less than 5 counts in connection with his withdrawal of 75 PNP security personnel previously assigned to her. To her strong and scathing accusations of lying Rommel’s response was “deadma.” For all legal intents and purposes such silence is admission of sin.
If we are to take into account his palpable lying in other public fora, Mr. Marbil has really lost his marbles. In that Senate hearing of August 5, 2024 on the matter of the PNP special action forces’ raid and ravage of KOJC premises, Marbil and Torre (Brigadier General Nicolas Torre lll, director of the Police Regional Office-Davao (PRO-11), made a spectacle of themselves as shameless fools when they arrogantly indulged in rhetorics removed from the realities of the video footages depicted (like the President’s SONAS removed from the realities of the ground) and the realities of the straightforward, candid, forthright narratives of the KOJC people on the PNP raid. Torre made the tragic kicker, a fatal slip of the tongue when he blurted they cannot effect the arrest of Pastor Quiboloy if they will abide by the rules of engagement or protocol. There the fish is caught by the mouth. They can only arrest the Pastor if they employ lawlessness — which they in fact have been doing. By Torre’s admission of the inutility of proper protocol, their playbook from the beginning has been lawlessness in effecting the arrest of Pastor Quiboloy. No wonder then, all this unnecessary force and violence on persons and property in the grounds of KOJC, which they sought to cloak with their barefaced lies.
Meanwhile, amidst these KOJC issues, VP Sara Duterte struck again by coming out with that open letter addressed to “Rommel” that took to task the General for his patent falsehood. This letter instantly spawned public uproar. She lends credence to our prediction that she is a ticking bomb (please refer to my commentary titled “VP Sara breakaway, a ticking bomb,” bylined Catalyst, published in banateros.com last June 24.). As a ticking bomb, expect her to continue ticking with her obviously calculated, well-thought of moves that always trigger tumultuous reactions from the public.
Here is our take. All these series of events in Davao City are not haphazard from the standpoint of the schemers and plotters of Malacañang; they were either anticipated and/or induced. We must realize that the Dutertes are acknowledged the only viable, genuine and powerful political opposition in the country today, and that they command the trust of majority of the people as surveys consistently chorus.
With this scenario, a sense of insecurity naturally overwhelms the administration. It is thus its objective to weaken or cripple the Dutertes’ superior political clout. On this end, what better moves toward this end in its thinking than to undertake to empower the ICC authorities to effect the arrest FPRD and the rest of the opposition. This is a risky move, and the administration will have to make a grand preparation for this sinister objective. The flooding of Davao of PNP personnel armed to the teeth and the withdrawal of PNP members from the city that are loyal to the Dutertes, are not, to us, a display of obsession against Pastor Quiboloy as many views them; on the contrary, they are part of a well-designed plot to isolate and preempt the defense of the only political power in the country that can mount a political challenge to the tyrannical current wielders of powers of government.
The similar disgorging of battle-geared PNP troops in the KOJC premises is a logical preemptive move of the Malacañang plotters. The KOJC group is the biggest supporter of the Dutertes in these parts, the multi-troops are there to intimidate, preempt and surveil the possible emergence therefrom — in the eventuality of ICC strike — of elements hostile to the Marcos apparatus. In aid of this Malacañang plot, it is but logical for Torre to seek the deployment of 1500 armed troopers for one month in the KOJC compound. Torre, for all his blabbermouth, has again betrayed the plot of his superior. Senator De La Rosa, on the occasion of his interview on TV with the Banateros, apparently confirmed this plot, when
he said that the urgings of his experience as former PNP Chief, Torre must be under instructions from his superior to deploy excessive number of PNP troopers in the KOJC premises.
Weak leadership in government, coupled with massive lawlessness and unabated big-time corruption — a recipe for people power!
