MANUEL “MANNY” P. MOGATO is Editor-at-Large and opinion writer, writing under the column “In the Trenches.” As Reuters Manila correspondent, he and two other colleagues won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2018 for their coverage of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.
On the night of Dec. 3, 2020, Norvin Tamesin was spending time with a friend at a garden in Los Baños, Laguna.
Tamesin, who loved bonsai, was explaining to his friend how to grow and shape miniature trees in containers, when Los Baños mayor Caesar Perez was gunned down near the municipal hall.
Days later, Tamesin, a former three-term municipal councilor, was tagged as a suspect in the killing of the mayor.
A police informant claimed he was with Tamesin around the time Perez was killed at a 7-Eleven outlet, where the shots that killed the mayor were believed to have been fired.
Tamesin went into hiding but was arrested almost a year later in Baguio City. He spent seven months in jail for a crime that he said he did not commit.
Lawmakers looking into the thousands of extrajudicial killings under the previous government of President Rodrigo Duterte believed the mayor was killed because he was listed as a narco-politician.
They said Mayor Perez’s assassination was not politically motivated. It was a hit similar to the killing of Antonio Halili, mayor of Tanauan, Batangas, in July 2018.
More than 150 local officials were listed on Duterte’s illegal drugs watch list, virtual targets in his brutal and bloody war on drugs.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) said it had killed more than 7,000 in legitimate police operations nationwide. It claimed the police officers were only defending themselves when the drug suspects chose to shoot it out during sting operations, known as drug buy-busts.
Tamesin was the logical fall guy. He was the mayor’s political opponent although he had returned to private life a year after his term ended in 2019.
Fast forward to October 2024, a former police colonel, Royina Garma, testified in the lower house’s Quad Committee that a police team was behind Halili’s assassination during a flag ceremony.
A sniper’s bullet killed Halili more than 500 meters from where he was standing. It was an unsolved murder until Garma testified before a congressional inquiry.
She said a subordinate in the Cebu City Police, Kenneth Paul Abotra, had boasted of being part of a team that eliminated Halili.
Lawmakers showed CCTV footage of a man suspected to be part of the hit squad at a convenience store near Tanauan city hall before the shooting in 2018.
Two years later, the same man was caught in another CCTV footage near the area where Perez was shot dead.
The lawmakers had reasons to believe the main was Albotra, who was reassigned from Cebu region to Laguna in Southern Tagalog for less than a month before Halili was murdered.
During the congressional inquiry, Tamesin said Albotra resembled the man who could have been part of the Perez assassination team in 2020.
Duterte’s war on drugs did not only rob tens of thousands of suspected drug users, couriers, and street-level peddlers of their lives.
It also shattered the lives of innocent citizens, like Tamesin who was blamed for Perez’s death in 2020.
Tamesin lost his livelihood, his children were bullied in school, and he was forced to sell his properties to finance his legal defense.
Tamesin was, perhaps, luckier than former senator Leila de Lima, who spent seven years in detention for similar trumped-up charges of drug trafficking.
Several convicted felons, a suspected drug lord, and a law enforcement agent had testified before the local court that de Lima was a “protector” of a drug cartel operating inside the National Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa.
Even her own driver had corroborated the allegations against de Lima.
However, before Duterte stepped down from power, one by one the witnesses against de Lima retracted.
The suspected drug lord, Kerwin Espinosa, also took back his statements, saying he was forced to make false accusations against de Lima by former PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa, who was later elected senator.
Testifying at the congressional inquiry, Espinosa said dela Rosa had threatened him in 2016 that he would be implicated in the drug trade or face the same fate as his father, who was killed in a police operation inside Baybay provincial jail in November 2016.
Rolando Espinosa was the first-term mayor of Albuera, Leyte. Like Halili and Perez, he too was on Duterte’s narco-list.
When Duterte became president in July 2016, he said he had listed people involved in the illicit drug trade.
But the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) did not obtain a copy of Duterte’s drug list.
What was in the PDEA’s possession was a drug list drawn up by the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).
It contained about 3,000 names. Duterte had an additional 3,000 names on his list, which reportedly came from the Bureau of Corrections.
The CIDG list came from the barangay and municipal anti-drug councils but had not been validated.
A national drug watchlist was only compiled in 2020 after an inter-agency task force had validated the names on the two separate lists.
Incidentally, the name of retired police general Wesley Barayuga appeared on the drug watch list in August 2020 after he was killed on suspicion he was involved in the drug trade. His name was never listed before August 2020.
Lawmakers believed he was listed only in August 2020 to justify his killing.
Garma was implicated in Barayuga’s killing when he threatened to expose corruption in the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) which Garma headed at that time.
Tamesin, de Lima, and Barayuga were classic examples of how Duterte had destroyed lives in the name of his genocidal war on drugs policy.
Duterte and his allies went out of their way to fabricate evidence and coerce witnesses to make false testimonies to pin down political opponents, critics, and even innocent civilians.
Lawyers who were helping defend suspected drug lords were also killed. A nine-year-old girl also became collateral damage in an anti-illegal drugs operation.
Kian delos Santos was mercilessly gunned down by police officers who wanted to report an accomplishment, as Duterte offered rewards for every drug suspect killed.
There could be more innocent men and women killed and jailed during the drug war.
Can Duterte bring back the lives lost? Can he piece together the lives he had shattered?
It is up to the lawmakers now to hold Duterte and his allies accountable and ensure justice for the lives lost and shattered.
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