Ed's note: this is the continuation of the previous post; excerpt from a book I'm writing titled Correspondent. Please feel free to comment. thanks!
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Things got kinda slower and darker, figuratively, when the sun went down. After the early evening newscasts, the police reporters would disappear into their hideaways, be it the local sauna bath or strip joint for a night of drinking and carousing. That left those few banished to the night beat to fight over the torn sofas and heavily gouged benches in the press office. I would find a corner chair to sit on, crack open a book, and kill the time doing the rounds of homicide, general assignments section, or theft and robbery. I bought a small transistor radio, and wired a headset so I could monitor the AM radio stations constantly with the radio clipped to my belt. I remember the smells of the homicide section most of all. I would lean over the homicide desk, greet the cop and duty, and with the requisite drawl of someone whose balls are too heavy, politely but firmly ask to see the thick police blotter where the recent homicides and murders were first listed. I must have looked at that police blotter a hundred times every night. The section also had a small jail cell that was always crowded, and you would run smack into a wall of humidity and stench the minute you got closer than three feet. The homicide section was our favorite, because stories here had the best chances of seeing print. General Assignments Section, or GAS, came a close second, since this is where complaints of rape and assorted nasties are lodged. Theft and Robbery ran third, because theft was not unusual anymore, and robbery in this country is all relative. The night duty cops would sleep on benches or plastic chairs lined together. The small offices of the section chiefs would almost always be covered with peeling mirror tint.
The practice at the time was for the night shift reporters to cover the whole of Metro Manila. So when the sun went down, my beat expanded from Manila to the whole metropolis. This meant I was responsible for an area that covers more than a dozen cities and municipalities. How my office expected me to cover all of this alone was way beyond my comprehension.
Print coverage that time was worlds away from TV coverage. We print reporters had no vehicles, or living allowances, so we didn't do the rounds of all ten police precincts in Manila. We simply couldn’t afford it. The TV guys, naturally, went around with their service vans and porta-lights, thrilling cops and criminals with the idea of instant fame and celebrity. Lowlife like print reporters had to hope that cops appreciate the written word enough to buy a publication, even a tabloid. Many times I would find that a policeman had no idea what a Chronicle was, or that it was a newspaper, or that it was a publication that was adjudged Number One in Readership Quality. Still, every thirty minutes or every hour, I would lift the ancient phone in the press office and call each of Manila’s ten police stations, and every police district headquarters, introduce myself and my newspaper, and ask if there was anything interesting developing. On the other hand, the TV reporters, with their cameramen, drivers, and news vehicles, could afford to bounce around the city while looking as fresh as a daisy. Simply put, it was a pretty lonely job. The only connection you had to your office was a small press card and an occasional paycheck. That’s why most print guys generally stayed at the press office of the western police district headquarters in UN Avenue. It was tedious and boring work, looking for a story that could force a remat in a political-business paper.
It sounds so much like “press office” coverage, where reporters stay at the press office and occasionally make calls to contacts to ask for news. Today, I would tell reporters to avoid that practice and go out and search for enterprise stories. But today, we are all wired to each other and to contacts with cellular phones. Two decades ago, the cellphone did not exist, the beeper was still years away, and the working public telephone was an occasional blessing. Really, finding a working payphone then was already reason for celebration. If you have to cover the whole Metropolis alone at night with no telephone or vehicles at a time of bombings, assassinations, and coup attempts, you are always afraid of stepping away from the pack, even for a while, and missing the biggest story of the year. I remember, at the end of each night’s coverage, feeling very exposed and uncertain because I had been out of the loop for even just an hour or two. I would only feel relieved once I am back in the press office and able to check on all the police districts in Metro Manila.
One time, in the middle of the night, a bunch of reporters announced they were off to the massage parlor for a free massage, among "other" things. Not that they had any freebies really coming to them. There are reporters who simply assume that they can walk into a beerhouse or massage parlor and get everything on the house because of their connections with the local station commander or the vice squad. It was a pretty sleazy arrangement for many police reporters, but bear in mind that this happens in a much larger and grander scale among, for example, clean-looking and famous and famously hard-hitting newscast anchors and program hosts, or big network bosses, the only difference being that they probably go to places where the toilets smelled a lot cleaner and actually had toilet seats.
They even invited me along, which probably meant I had been in the night shift too long. I declined, saying it was dangerous, since the Manila police had been busy lately raiding sauna baths that were fronts for prostitution. For that, I got laughed at. There are some perks that come with living in Manila’s dark underbelly.
Seeing my hesitance, one reporter bragged that he once made a reluctant masseuse strip and attend to his earthly needs simply by mentioning to her that he was tight with the vice cops.
I remember the Christmas party of the press corps. It was held someplace in San Marcelino Malate, with WPD chief Alfredo Lim as the special guest of honor. Naturally, the organizers of the press corps party also arranged for a bunch of girls to strip for the press corps as part of wishing everyone a very merry Christmas. But this was the time when the Manila police was cracking down on girlie joints, and raids were being conducted by General Lim's men left and right. The party was supposed to start in the early evening, but the time passed and people, including the good general, were getting restless - the girls had not yet arrived. Finally, someone broke the news: the girls were frightened by the presence of the Manila police chief, and had refused to come. Duly apprised of the situation, General Lim rose to the occasion and ordered his men to make sure the reporters were properly entertained. After an hour, the police van arrived, and onto the stage marched... the Discovery girls! Hauled from a popular girlie bar along Magsaysay Boulevard, the girls promptly gyrated and stripped to the hearty hooting and clapping of the reporters and their guests, including the chief of the Manila police. Such are the ironies of life.
On occassion, a "big" story would come up, and we would all rush to the latest tragedy of some poor father, wife, or son. Since I had no vehicle, and no money to get a cab, and since many of these crimes took place in the nooks and crannies of Manila, I would just jump into the vehicle of any friendly reporter. Getting to the crime scene was no problem. Getting back sometimes was.
One time, we rode with another reporter to a crime scene in some remote part of Paranaque. Unfortunately, I lost track of time, and got left behind by the rest of the reporters. It was past midnight, and I remember worrying where in the world I was in Paranaque, and how I could get back to Manila.
It was also interesting watching how police reporters work. In a way, we were part of the metro’s underworld, living off the stagnation and decay that the comfortable would rather ignore. After all, no one wants to have anything to do with a policeman unless a crime is committed and you are the victim. Policemen, in their dirty, grimy, humid precincts, are for those people who live in dirty, grimy, humid shanties. The rich and powerful are isolated in their gated and fenced communities, with their own blue guards with gasoline for their mobile patrols and radios that really worked. It was a rare treat when we see one of the rich and well-off in the precincts, their clean and moisturized skin glistening and uncomfortable and irritated by the stale air that we breathed into our lungs every night. There were times when I felt like telling these visitors, perhaps rather unfairly, “Welcome to our world. Did you even know we exist?”
Police reporting has its own subculture. It was a “masculine” world, although there were a good number of female police reporters. I don’t use the word masculine in a sexist sense. It was simply a world skewed heavily against the female gender. Female police reporters were sexually harassed with such regularity that the older ones had refined the put-down to an art form. Sometimes, police officers and lowly bureaucrats hit on them with the subtlety of a bull in heat. I know of one female reporter whose feminine charms so overwhelmed one local official that he chased her around his office table. Naturally, no complaint was ever filed. You can hardly complain about your sources, when a big part of your job actually demands that you court them, woo them, and make them think of you every time they have a story to tell, and even when they don’t.
So it was part of the risks of the craft that a good number of female police reporters became romantically involved with this police officer, or that local official. Perhaps romantic is too generous a word; often, it was more like two people realizing they both had something the other needed.
Again, the TV people had a clear advantage here over their print brethren. The TV girls, naturally, looked like goddesses to the bottom feeders in print. It was a rare day when a female TV reporter would waft into the press office; on days like those, time would slow to a crawl and the birds would start chirping outside the press office window and the window blinds seemed to open up a little more to let the sunlight in. At least, until the TV reporter opens her mouth. But while the TV girls were obviously more attractive magnets for the maniacs in uniform, their TV persona also offered them some sort of invisible protection. It’s like the beauty queen syndrome; everyone drools after them, but few would actually try to court one. There’s that unsaid and unmentionable feeling that only the big bosses get these types of girls. On the other hand, everyone tries to hit on the girl next door.
TV people also have that “power” that print people don’t have. People know them by their first name, smile at them in the mall, recognize their faces in the crowd. People actually want to be interviewed by them, no matter how silly their questions can sometimes be. What this means is that many sources really want to be meet these journalists. On the other hand, the print guys have to scrape and beg for a short interview. You can see it even now. Shine a bright light, point a camera, and poke a microphone at a minor official, and he starts jabbering giddily, spouting all sorts of quotables to the most inane questions, often in tortured english. Sometimes, you don’t even have to ask a question. Many times, it’s even hard to get them to stop talking. But replace the lights and camera with a reporter with a notepad or a tape recorder, and, unless the source is politically savvy, you’d be lucky if the source even bothers to acknowledge him. What this means is that the female police print reporter sometimes has to put herself at a clear disadvantage, because she has to go the extra mile to be extra nice and friendly and charming. It’s something that is easily misconstrued.
Also, the TV girls naturally move around with an entire TV crew, complete with camera, lights, microphone, and makeup kit. Given this fact of life, the source is seldom alone with the TV reporter. Even if he was, the thought that the camera crew is just waiting outside the door is enough to dampen the libido of many wannabee lotharios. A TV team and its equipment are intimidating to a lot of sources. In contrast, a demure female print reporter will be all alone when she finally bags an appointment with this or that official. She is armed only with a notepad and a pen; no threatening cameras and crew. In all likelihood, she is also a rookie.
Having said all that, there are some female reporters who have managed to walk that thin line and come out on top. These are the reporters who have learned to parry the advances without offending the advancer, who have learned to be just a little flirtatious and charming without appearing inviting. It really is a thin line, and the sharp edge can cut both ways.
There’s that stereotype of the police reporter that we all tried to resist, but eventually fell into as the months went by. The most obvious was that drawl that many of us affected when we spoke on the phone, especially to policemen or other reporters. It was a drawl that sounds halfway between drunk and bored, a tambay’s drawl perhaps, as if to show that I’m cool and unconcerned even if the world ends tonight, but lemme check what’s happening on your side of the world anyway. We’d draw out the word “Sir” into “Seeerrrr….” The tone was set on a deadpan monotone. And of course, there was the cussing and the bragging and the loud voices, and the gambling and the whoring and the petty corruption all around you that you have to treat with a blasé attitude. I stepped on someone’s brains yesterday. Oh really? Was it warm? Or, I was whoring the whole night last night. Today’s another day.
But it was the least obvious that was the more alarming. The experience ate away a little bit of our humanity, each one of us, in different degrees, and few of us would ever admit to it. Anyone who immerses himself deeply into this side of the city absorbs a part of it, and leaves a part of himself as well. The irony is that in losing a bit of our humanity, some of us, I hope, came away a little more human, a little more conscious of our frailties and faults. It was a frightening gamble, because after a while it became clear that many of us simply lost our humanity without gaining anything in return. Remember the idealism of college, where we were taught to wield the mighty power of the pen with great circumspection, to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afficted? We who lived in the dark who were supposed to give it light, have begun throwing our own darker shadows.
I remember one night in particular. A man was inconsiderate enough to get stabbed to death. Or, at least he was considerate enough to get stabbed during my watch. I rushed to the Philippine General Hospital with a photographer from another newspaper. I don’t recall why I was even there, since the story would never have made the Chronicle’s pages. Perhaps I had hitched a ride in the photog’s service vehicle.
Anyway, we rushed to the morgue, where the poor fellow lay on a gurney, cold and stiffening. Unfortunately for the photog I was with, the doctors or the first responders had already removed the knife from the dead man's chest. Naturally. What doctor leaves the knife in the chest while attempting treatment?
The photog cussed and swore, and complained of inconsiderate doctors who made life more difficult for working stiffs like him to get good pictures of dead stiffs like that. What good was a photo of a stabbing victim if there was no knife to show? So the photog did the next best thing – he asked the mortician to produce the knife, and the mortician willingly obliged.
In hindsight, I now wonder why the murder weapon was with the mortician in the first place. This was long before the police force created the Scene of the Crime Operatives, or SOCO, and long long before hollywood cooked up CSI.
Okay, the photog told the mortician. Stick it back in. To the mortician’s credit, he hesitated. Then, to my amusement, he stuck the blade back into the knife wound. Thwack. Just like that. No complaints from the victim, of course. And at least the mortician had the decency not to make a new stab wound. There was no one in the room except for me, the photog, the mortician, and the dead guy. The photog snapped happily away, and we left with the knife still sticking out of the man’s body. The guys from that CSI show would have gone into epileptic fits. The fact that I was amused and not shocked spoke volumes of my frame of mind at the time.
There’s also a popular story that went the rounds of the WPD. It’s a fact that many reporters and photogs like to beat up crime suspects who are in police custody. Why do they do it? Perhaps it's considered a rite of passage, perhaps it's a show of mindless machismo; perhaps it's a vent for all the frustrations that have built up from seeing all the mindless blood and gore of Manila at night. Or perhaps it's simply mindless. Whatever the case, it is not unusual for reporters to beat a suspect black and blue, in front of the arresting policemen. Naturally, the suspects cower in fear and don't fight back. I would really hate to be a suspect.
One night, the popular story goes, a reporter rushed to the press office. Hey there’s a crime suspect at the theft and robbery section, he tells the rest. So the reporters and photogs rush to the theft and robbery section, where they come across a man standing there alone. There was no policeman, so naturally, everyone started beating the poor fellow up. And on cue, the policeman comes back from the john, and finds everyone ganging up on the man. Stop, the cop says, that's not the suspect. That’s the victim.
The story always draws a lot of laughs, but it brings home a sticky point. Some reporters like to say that the criminals deserve to be beaten up, especially if it involves crimes against children. I have seen, personally, both reporters and cameramen from print, television, and radio, beating up suspects while police officers watch with delight. Some of them were even my own cameramen. And to be honest, I have, on occasion, been tempted to throw in a few kicks and punches myself. After twenty or so years, I still have not given in to that temptation, but it is always there, lurking, maybe waiting for a moment of weakness. How do I explain that feeling? I don’t consider myself a particularly violent person, although I have seen quite a lot of it delivered to people both deserving and undeserving. But what makes a man want to lash out and beat another man to a pulp? How much motivation does it need? Or is it motivation we really need? Could it be that in our deepest, baser recesses, what we really look for is not motivation, but an excuse. Oh yeah, he’s accused of raping a kid. Then a hand lashes out and connects with a nose or a brow, then another, and a few moments later, a man is barely able to see because of his swelling eyelids. Oh he snatched a purse. And a foot lashes out at a groin. Granted these men have been accused of crimes. But some of those who choose to inflict vigilante punishment on them have, if I recall, been guilty of baser offenses: the reporter who extorts from cops and establishments; or perhaps the photog who uses a masseuse’s body for free by threatening her with his connections.
But more than anything, this country is infamous for a law enforcement system that is so inefficient and ineffective, where there is never a guarantee that the man the cops haul off to the precinct is likely to be the man who deserves to go to jail. Woe to the man who is hauled off in front of the cameras by the police as a suspect – he is just as likely to be innocent as he is guilty.
Anyone who has watched any of the primetime newscasts must by now be familiar with the most common scene in police reporting. Whether the crime is rape, acts of lasciviousness, snatching, or petty theft, the cameras almost always seem to catch the exact moment when the victim and the suspect face off in the police station, and the victim, in a fit of anger, lashes out and slaps or punches the suspect in the face. The suspect reels, but remains silent, with his head bowed in embarassment and submission. Has anyone ever wondered how cameramen can be so skilled in timing that they always catch that money shot? It’s standard fare in police reports. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that it would be unusual if the story doesn’t have that shot.
The truth of the matter is that the suspect is often already sitting in a corner of a dingy cell when the reporters arrive at the station with their cameras and mikes. If the reporter is lucky, the victim is seated in front of the detective’s desk, giving a statement. First question out of the reporter’s lips often is: Where’s the suspect? Then, can you bring him out to face his accuser?
That’s all still peachy at this point. Then come the other commands from the journos – point out the suspect for the cameras! Come closer! Can you turn this way? Then, the inevitable. Is it true he molested you? Are you going to let him get away with that? Well, hit him! This is your chance! On the face!
Usually, and to her credit, the victim hesitates, as if unsure if she is really allowed to do just that. But the cameras are rolling, the lights are on, and the reporters are goading, so it must be acceptable, right? So maybe she lashes out with a nice slap on the suspect’s face. The suspect barely feels it. Or maybe the cameraman wasn’t ready for that shot. Maybe the camera lights weren’t on yet. Or maybe the reporter just isn’t happy enough with that angle. Or that slap. Do it again! Harder! And the victim begins getting in the mood, and draws in before letting loose with a snappier slap. Sometimes, it would take several slaps and punches, or several takes, before the camera teams are happy with their footage, and the suspect is led away to his jail cell, the victim takes her seat again, and the camera team leaves in search of another crime to report, or perhaps another crime to commit. The suspect retires to a corner of his cell, no doubt hoping that there aren’t any more camera teams on duty that night. I would really hate to be wrongly accused of anything when there are newsteams around.
And there was the petty corruption. This was a time when there was still an absolute ban on all forms of pyrotechnics. Typically, policemen would haul in a huge cache of confiscated firecrackers in the weeks running up to Christmas. It was not unusual for reporters covering the story to ask for some "samples" of the confiscated goods, and neither was it unusual for cops to give them away, or take home some for themselves. So whenever there was a big haul of firecrackers, reporters would rush to the precinct responsible for the confiscation to report on this blatant criminal violation of the country’s anti-firecracker laws. Then after the coverage, the reporters, myself included, would often leave with bags full of firecrackers, courtesy of the friendly station commander.
The same courtesy also extends to other less harmless hauls. I remember one night when a reporter came back to the press office with some marijuana. Marijuana, then as now, is illegal. The stuff was confiscated by police from drug addicts somewhere in Manila, and the cops divided the loot and gave some to the reporters. This guy generously offered to light up a joint for the rest of the bunch, but someone wisely pointed out that the press office was right behind the front desk of the WPD, and it may be a bit embarrassing for everyone, especially if we didn’t offer any to the desk officer on duty. So we all went to another empty room elsewhere in the WPD headquarters to try this new stash. Suffice it to say that the first joint I ever tried was smoked inside the headquarters of the Manila Police, courtesy of Manila's Finest. It must have been a particularly fine joint, because I don't even remember getting a buzz.
There’s a certain sadness in covering the police beat that takes a certain kind of reporter to discern. Despite the occasional action, one is always face to face with the ordinary sadness of ordinary life and ordinary death. In fact, the real danger is of death becoming so ordinary to people who are always exposed to it, and therein lies the real sadness. Too many police reporters have become so immune to emotion that they can stick a knife back into a dead body just to make for a better photograph. Its a tragedy partly borne of the stereotypes formed around reporters in general and police and war reporters in particular. If the British stereotype is the stiff upper lip, the reporter stereotype is the stoic, heartless, emotionless, and detached observer. Many take the stereotype a step further, adding cruel, inebriated, loud, and insensitive to the mix of descriptions. Your father died? Tough luck, life is cheap. Your sister got raped? Was she asking for it? Don’t get me wrong; I am describing the stereotypes that a lot of reporters have been trying to fit into. I’m describing what is, not what should be. In covering the joys and travails of humanity, we seem to have lost our own sense of humanity as well.
That’s why you have a lot of reporters who try to swagger like their nuts are too big, who belch loudly, scratch publicly, and use profanity like they were badges of honor, who act like bad boys because they think that's what they have to do to look like reporters. The truth is that the loud ones are usually the more cowardly louts, while the really brave reporters just go about their business quietly. Its like your dick - if its not big enough, you feel the need to keep pointing to it just to remind people you have one.
Most of the stories we generated at night were crime stories, with an occasional feature thrown in. But there were other things we witnessed that never saw print, at least not the way it should have. On many an occasion, we were witness to a practice called zoning. They also call it the “saturation drive,” which makes it sound as harmless as a newspaper drive. What happens is that police operatives cordon off a particular area in, say, a squatter community. Everyone who happened to be in that “zone” was then picked up and hauled off to the police station for questioning. It’s a throwback to the hamletting system established by the Americans during the Vietnam War, adapted to the Philippine counterinsurgency war, and later adapted to the anti-crime fight in urban areas. The logic, if you could call it that, was that you could identify a criminal because of the way he looked, even if he wasn’t performing a crime at that time. Of course the police never put it that way, but it was obvious that that was the logic. Hundreds of bareshirted grimy sweaty men were hauled off like cattle to the nearest precinct to be inspected for gang tattoos or drug paraphernalia and weapons. There, they would squat on the floor, their elbows on their knees, their tattoos screaming in wild red green, purple and blue swirls, their eyes darting around as police picked out their likeliest suspects. Once in a while, some weapons would be found, and an arrest would be made. But for the rest of those unceremoniously dragged off from their families just so they could be “invited for questioning,” it was just another night of harassment by the police. After the zoning incident, they would just be told to go home, as if nothing happened. No apologies necessary. It’s as if to say that it’s just part of our job to treat you like cattle just to make sure the rest of Metro Manila is safe, and it’s part of your role to be get hauled off to the station and be treated like mindless obedient cows. Surprisingly few people ever lodged complaints, even though it was a gross violation of rights. Imagine doing that to residents of ritzy Dasamarinas Village in Makati. Oh the fury and the indignation of the human rights violations! But of course, you won’t find criminals there, right? At least not of this small caliber. They would only be here in Balut, Tondo, plotting with the rest of the great unwashed for the overthrow of the pink-skinned and the freshly scrubbed. Yet like those before us, most of us took the practice for granted, satisfied with just recording the number of arrests and the weapons found, if any, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to arrest and detain an entire community just because we didn’t like the soap they used, or because they couldn’t afford soap at all.
I turned twenty on my first month on the job, in November 1987. For my birthday celebration, Gerry hauled us off to Quiapo for a double feature in one of the seedy moviehouses that featured x-rated inserts in b-movies. That was how I spent my birthday, watching Scorpio Nights and some other forgettable film [who cares about titles? we weren't there to critique the storyline anyway] in a hot and humid moviehouse where most of the audience would rather stay standing than sit on the hard sticky chairs. It’s like walking into a steam room, since the airconditioners were not working, and everyone was sweating from both the ambient temperature and the collective body heat. The guy playing the films didn’t bother with aesthetics. He had randomly spliced assorted x-rated clips of naked men and women with dirty soles [sorry, you can’t help but notice] huffing and puffing away into the double feature, without any regard as to whether the story still made any sense.
These moviehouses were known hangouts of closet queens and ageing male and female prostitutes who, for reasons you can very well imagine, can only peddle their wares in the dark, and Vincent had to fend off advances from people who were getting attracted to his balding pate which shone like a beacon in the moviehouse. The place stank, the air wet and humid, and we felt itchy all throughout the double feature. Afterwards, if I recall correctly, we graduated to a small restaurant in one of Quiapo’s nooks for a quick cheap snack before our editors found out what we were up to.
It was a sad funny way to celebrate a birthday. But two decades later, we would look back at that day and remember it as one of the more memorable birthday celebrations I had. The cheapest, too.
Of my time in the police beat, I remember the Dona Paz tragedy with the most vividness and clarity, and the images always come back easily, perhaps too easily.
That Christmas Eve was particularly memorable, and it didn’t help that every morning for several weeks, I would see the dirty sneakers I had left outside our doorstep and be reminded of things that I would rather forget. I would always see those sneakers, and every time I would promise I would get around to washing the congealed blood off the soles before I finally bring them into the house. It would take months before I finally did that, yet I still did it gingerly, holding the sneakers under a gushing spigot and hoping that the water pressure would be enough to clean the shoes. After that, I think I dunked the pair into a bucket of soapy water and left them there for a few days. But it was not the images that would haunt me. It was the smell, a minor miracle considering how my wife says my olfactory senses died a long time ago. It was a smell that I kept remembering at the oddest and most inconvenient times, as if it was always there lurking, waiting to be resurrected at the slightest trigger. For a while, the memory of that smell terrified me, especially when it came at night.
I also covered much of the hearings by the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) on the culpability of officials of Sulpicio Lines for the disaster. Sulpicio officers were grilled repeatedly over charges of overloading and negligence. I was given the Marina assignment because the hearings were held in the Marina offices just across the WPD headquarters along UN Avenue.
Much was made of the issue of overloading because it was a safety issue. The Dona Paz was crammed with some 5,000 passengers, but its manifest listed only 1,500 passengers. What this meant was that there were 3,500 other passengers who were not listed in the Coast Guard manifest. What this also meant was that there was a huge likelihood that there were not enough safety devices like lifeboats of lifejackets to go around.
This particular story, which saw print on the first day of 1988, drew the ire of Sulpicio officials. Days after it came out, one of Chronicle’s business/shipping reporters approached Vincent and myself to tell us that Sulpicio’s VP Vicente Gambito wanted to talk to us in person.
The meeting was arranged in a fancy French restaurant in Paco, Manila, whose name I could not pronounce. Being police reporters, we felt so out of place when we entered the restaurant, as if we had just walked in bare naked. Gambito invited us to a table and, without allowing us to warm our chairs, he proceeded to berate us for what he called inaccurate reporting.
In essence, Sulpicio was contesting our headline that they had admitted to overloading. What they had admitted to, he said, was that they had unlisted and unmanifested passengers. This is not the same thing as overloading. Overloading, he insisted, meant that the ship was no longer shipworthy because of the excess number of passengers on board. Perhaps overcrowding was the correct term.
We just stared at him, dumbfounded. I did not know what to say, or how to argue back. He may have had a point, technically speaking. The ship may have been overcrowded, but the more technical-minded may claim it was not necessarily overloaded. On the other hand, we felt that Sulpicio was splitting hairs to sidestep culpability. The point was that there were three times the number of allowed passengers on the ship. It was not a question of one or two passengers who were not listed in the manifest; it was a question of 3,500 people who were not in the list.
After his monologue, the Sulpicio official just stood up and left us. Apparently, he didn’t think that lowly correspondents deserved too much of his time or presence.
Then there was the question of which ship was responsible for the tragedy. The few survivors said that the Dona Paz rammed into the oil tanker M/T Vector, causing it to spill oil, which then caught fire and destroyed both ships. But Sulpicio would insist that the tanker rammed the left side of the Dona Paz, creating a huge gash that let water in. Panicking passengers rushed to the right side of the ship by instinct, causing it to list to the right and capsize into the burning sea. With both ships rusting at the bottom of the Tablas Straits, the truth may never be known.
The arguments would go back and forth, and litigation would cross continents for the next two decades. A class suit filed by the families of the victims failed to prosper because the filing fee was too large. These families banded together to form the Bulig Bulig Kita movement, or the Let Us Help Each Other movement. I haunted their offices in Quezon City constantly, talking and sympathizing with family members, all the time conscious that there were entire families who could not be represented here because they were all lost at sea.
The dead who were lucky enough to be recovered were placed in sealed metal boxes, which were then crammed inside wooden caskets. Having seen the bloated condition of the bodies in Funeraria Popular, I cannot and do not want to imagine how morticians were able to fit the bodies inside metal containers that could squeeze inside regular caskets.
All told, less than 300 bodies were recovered out of 5,000 souls. A few were returned to Manila, where a common funeral wake was held at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum in Manila. I remember the long lines of caskets on the basketball court of the stadium, with the small square glass window through which one normally views his deceased loved one. But instead of the calm face of the dead, you could only see the smooth burnished surface of galvanized tin. The metal containers began to bulge and leak because of pressure building inside that comes with decomposition, so there was a persistent smell of death. At one point, the Manila City government decided to close off the stadium for a day to fumigate the place and prevent an epidemic. I remember, after everyone had been asked to step out, peering inside the stadium and feeling my hair stand on end; the stadium’s strong vapor lights cut through the fog of chemicals descending on the caskets, creating a surreal scene in the middle of the basketball court. Suddenly, the death of 5,000 people was a very lonely affair.
After twenty years, most of my time as a police reporter is already a blur. I do remember much of the frustration and anger, and the sense of exploitation. We were, after all, asked to do so much, and paid so little. I would be lucky to get a thousand pesos a payday, and I was already considered one of the high earners among the correspondents. I remember, too many times, emerging from the Manila Chronicle office in Bonifacio Drive, or from the WPD headquarters along UN Avenue, and breathing a long heavy sigh. At night, I would try to keep myself busy in between calls to the various precincts and police district headquarters by burying my nose in a book. But you can only read so many pages before someone disrupts your reading with cussing and swearing and farting. It would have been nice to have the mobility to go around Metro Manila looking for enterprise stories at night, something I now encourage among reporters. But at that time, that was practically impossible for a solitary correspondent who had to cover the entire Metro Manila at night without a vehicle, a cellphone, pager, or radio, or an allowance, or even a guaranteed retainer. It was passive police reporting, I admit. The tabloids and TV reporters had it better; they had a service vehicle with a driver, two way radios, and a man in each district headquarters. At first I would hitch a ride with the tabloid jeeps whenever something broke. Later, I would hitch a ride more regularly with an ABS-CBN cameraman, Jun Lontoc. I remember that I would at times join the other tabloid reporters on their coverages, not because the story had any value to the Chronicle, but because it gave me a closer glimpse at another facet of life that I never see. Or perhaps I was already bored. On these trips, I would explore the dark alleys and warrens of Tondo and see a life that was worlds apart from the gated subdivisions of Quezon City.
I remember, after getting tired of swatting mosquitos while reading my book in the press office, emerging from the WPD headquarters for a breath of fresh air. I’d plop my ass down on the steps fronting the headquarters and take out a cigarette, my millionth for the night. There, I would watch the lights of vehicles flash by, count the roaches and the cigarette butts on the ground, and glance at the occasional crook that the cops would bring in, morbidly hoping that he had committed a crime sufficiently grave to be worthy of the Chronicle. I had to be selective with the crooks I cover; the Chronicle doesn’t write about just any crook and crime. So there I would stay for around half an hour, swatting at the mosquitos on the steps of the WPD, killing time until I had to return to swatting the mosquitos inside the press office.
By one in the morning, I knew there was already no way I could force a remat of the Chronicle even if the sky fell down. By that time, the night editor would also be either dead drunk or fast asleep or both. The newspaper had already been printed, and was about to be bundled off to newspaper distributors in Manila’s port area. That’s the only time I would shoulder my pack, step out of the WPD entrance one last time for that day, and walk briskly to Taft Avenue for a jeepney ride to Quezon City. If I was lucky, which was seldom, I could get a ride from Taft to faraway Tandang Sora in Quezon City. If I was unlucky, I would have to get another ride in Quiapo. At that time of the night, drivers wait for their jeeps to fill-up before being dispatched, so I had a lot of time to observe my fellow passengers, partly out of curiosity and partly out of the need to identify potential muggers early. This was long before the age of the call centers. The people who rode the jeeps at that time of the night were interesting people indeed. Some were bargirls getting off early, still heavy with make-up and the smell of cigarette smoke; others were night shift workers, tired and wasted, their heads lolling around before dropping down to their chest or on the poor fellow beside them before they suddenly jolt awake. You know the man beside you in the jeep is dead tired when he reaches up and grasps the rail on the jeepney ceiling, rests his head on the crook of his elbow and instantly falls asleep without ever letting go of the rail. I’ve done that myself several times, and thankfully, never had my pocket picked. And of course there were those who are headed home after a night of carousing, red-eyed and with breath stale with beer and yosi.
I would get off at the corner of Tandang Sora and Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. From there, I would walk some three or so kilometers to my home inside one of the subdivisions deep inside Tandang Sora. It wasn’t really a very long walk, although it could get tiresome if you have to do it at the end of each working day. By that time, it’s already 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, and the tricycles were no longer allowed inside most of Quezon City’s gated subdivisions. I could take a cab, but I couldn’t even afford the flag-down rate, much more take a cab every night. So every night, rain or shine, I would have to take a 30 to 45 minute walk home.
The walk was also an opportunity to de-stress and disengage from the world I left just an hour ago. I would play games with my mind, staying off the road and trying to blend with the shadows, avoiding the lamplight. I suppose there was a certain logic in my madness; I wanted to avoid getting spotted early by potential muggers. In those years, Tandang Sora was pretty much unpopulated, with tall cogon grass dominating both sides of the street. Everytime a vehicle would come up behind me, I would look down at the lengthening shadows so I could, without turning around, see if anyone was behind me.
On bad nights, it would rain hard. Since I had never made it a practice to bring an umbrella, I would just put on a jacket and a floppy hat, and walk home just like any other night except that I had to be more careful that passing cars don’t bump into me. I would get home soaking wet and shivering, but somehow feeling a little cleaner. I’d strip off my clothes and sit down with a heavy sigh.
And it wasn't a sigh of relief. With that sigh comes a question oft repeated by many caught in this kind of life: would there ever be more to my life than chasing ambulances and making a living off the dying? Such is a reporter's life, but coming from college, it was easy to rebel.
After half a year, I finally did. I told Cris that I had had enough of being exploited, enough of living like a bat. So I resigned, vowing never to return to journalism, and promising to find a job that would make plenty of money with as little work possible. Chris had a knowing smile on her face. She said, ok, just come back when you want. Maybe she knew something I didn't.
From journalism, I jumped to corporate public relations. I joined the PR machine of the defunct Magnolia, a company that made ice cream, fruit juices, and soft drinks. The pay was good, the working hours were much better, and the people actually looked and smelled clean. I lasted two months.
I have nothing against corporate PR, but it was extremely difficult for me to make the transition from my world to theirs. Their world revolved around ice cream and fruit juice, and the never-ending battle against the competition. Of course, much later I would get a taste of that myself with the never ending battle between ABS-CBN and GMA, but that was far in the future. I was with people who would rather die of thirst than drink a glass of the competition's softdrink. I was supposed to think Magnolia every waking minute, and even when I was asleep. It was too much for me.
So when I came crawling back to Cris, she gave me that knowing smile again, as if to say, we’ve been waiting for you, you lasted longer than we expected. Without a question, she threw me back into the fray, and I started getting more assignments, even from the lifestyle section. It was almost inconceivable, a police reporter writing for Sunday lifestyle, the chronicle's famed features section.
Things changed somewhat when I returned to the Chronicle. I was still assigned to cover the WPD, but I was beginning to get more assignments during the daytime. That may not sound like a big deal to most, but it was at the time. Daytime meant making the normal deadlines, and getting to write more stories, and actually seeing them in print. Daytime work also meant I wouldn’t have to live with the ghouls at midnight, and I could have some of my life back.
After months of living like a bat among cavemen, it was refreshing to work with daylight all around you. Items were so much clearer, although issues were not. Why, now you could actually see the gunshot wound! There was a lot more variety in the kinds of stories you could tackle. In working the day shift, I began covering less of the dead and more of the living.
Nemesio Prudente was one of the luckiest persons in Manila. He’s been the subject of countless assassination attempts. Now, those two statements may sound like a contradiction. But the fact is that despite so many attempts on his life, the president of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines lived through all of them, to simply expire of old age in a Cavite hospital in March 2008.
When I first joined The Chronicle, Prudente had just been the target of another ambush attempt. On November 10 1987, unknown gunmen shot his car full of holes near the Lambingan bridge in Santa Ana as he rode to his office at the PUP campus in Santa Mesa. In doing so, they also put some holes in Prudente himself, but not enough to kill him. It was Prudente’s lawyer who was killed in that ambush.
Then on June 30 1988, or less than a year after the first ambush, gunmen peppered his convoy with some more bullets. Prudente was badly wounded, but survived the attempt. Three of his bodyguards who were riding in the lead car did not.
It was puzzling for the uninitiated. Professional hitmen trying to kill a school president? Was it an argument over grades? Prudente had created a lot of enemies among the resurgent right even before the shaky Cory years. Prudente had served as PUP president from 1962 to 1972, when it was still known as the Philippine College of Commerce. That early, the nationalist and outspoken Prudente, who encouraged activism and nationalism in the school, was already targeted by elements from the Marcos military and police. So when Martial Law was declared in 1972, Prudente was one of the first to be arrested and thrown in jail.
When Cory took power in 1986, Prudente was reappointed to his old position in the renamed Polytechnic University of the Philippines, or PUP. Prudente never forgot his old mission of spurring the student body into a more active and militant role in politics and society. But his enemies never forgot him either. Rightist elements suspected that Prudente had allowed the left to use the PUP campus as a base for leftist rebels and assassination squads as well.
It was a hairy time to belong to the legal left. Rightist hitmen were assassinating leftist leaders and labor leaders. Kilusang Mayo Uno chairman Rolando Olalia was tortured and mutilated before he was finally murdered, his body dumped in an empty lot in Antipolo with his underwear stuffed in his mouth. Young activist Lean Alejandro also met the same fate. Rightists in the police and military, the same people who tried to topple Marcos before they were saved by People Power, were now putting immense pressure on the Aquino government to let go of suspected leftists in her cabinet. The pressure would occasionally find an outlet in the numerous coup attempts against Cory. In the first three years after Edsa, the Cory government always seemed to be tottering on the brink of collapse, as the security forces tasked with defending the new democracy were always of suspect loyalty. Two years into the new government, Cory had to use a pressure valve. Acceding to demands from the right, she let go of Labor Secretary Augusto “Bobbit” Sanchez, Presidential Spokesman Rene Saguisag, and Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo. This stabilized the situation somewhat, at least until the next coup attempt in 1989.
But the rightists weren’t the only ones with death squads. This was also the heydey of the Alex Boncayao Brigade, the communist hitsquad more popularly known as the sparrow unit. Young sparrows would case police and military officers accused of crimes against the people, and shoot them down in broad daylight when the opportunity arose.
This had also been the problem in Davao City in the last years of the Marcos regime. The sparrows had free reign over the city, assassinating their enemies at will – at least until government found a solution: vigilante justice.
Local police and military officials organized vigilante squads and hunted the sparrows down. Thus was organized the infamous Alsa Masa, the Force of the Masses, a group of paramilitaries answerable only to their police and military handlers. The Alsa Masa movement was whipped into a frenzy by a popular AM radio announcer in Davao named Jun Pala, who paraded around town with a pistol tucked into his waist.
Borrowing from the experience of the Alsa Masa, the Manila Police under then Brig. Gen. Alfredo Lim organized its own vigilante force, headed by the colorful police commander of the Tondo District.
Colonel Romeo Maganto is neither telegenic nor photogenic. Yet he was probably the best known and most sought after [at least by the media] policeman in Metro Manila in the late eighties because of his quotable quotes and his propensity for staging dramatic performances for the press. Maganto is short, dark and stocky, and tends to talk to everyone like a policeman interrogating a suspect. But in that sense, he was perfect for his new role as the godfather of Metro Manila’s anti-communist vigilante force. To him, it seemed, everyone was guilty of something until proven innocent. Communists were peering from every street corner, just waiting for the right time to assault us with quotes from Karl Marx or Mao’s little red book. Like most people, he probably wasn’t really a rabid anti-communist; he was just a man who rabidly went after whoever his superiors said were the enemy. Thus, the raids on squatter colonies and the “zoning” became more frequent, as police operatives turned the squatter shanties inside out to hunt down the sparrows. In all these raids, no sparrow was ever arrested, although a whole lot of people lost a lot of sleep, not because they were guilty of assassinating enemies of the people, but because they simply didn’t smell good enough. But then again, who could complain? Certainly not Manila’s jaded press.
I remember one weekend, when Maganto invited media to his Police Station 1 in Tondo for a photo-op of him and his men training his vigilantes in the fine art of killing people. In a makeshift shooting range at the back of the station, Maganto and assorted wannabees hefted .45 caliber pistols and bravely dry-fired at paper targets for the cameras, pretending they were criminals, leftists, and perhaps mediamen. Naturally, some mediamen with their pot-bellies and their oversized sunglasses, joined in to show off their pieces. They lined up as well and proudly dry-fired at the paper targets, pretending they were evil editors and deskmen, or cheapskate police station commanders. Of course, Maganto, with his grim countenance and his shiny .45 pistol, ended up splashed all over the front pages of Metro Manila’s dailies the next day. I suppose that was also his intention. But Maganto also miscalculated. The ensuing outcry from the photographs of armed vigilantes in Metro Manila streets forced the government to clamp down on Maganto, preventing him from arming his gang of volunteers. In the end, Maganto agreed to just arm his volunteers with nightsticks. Still, the zoning of squatter communities continued.
Thus, it was hardly a surprise that someone with that bad an aim would want to kill Prudente that badly. Months after the 1987 assassination attempt on Prudente, Attorney Artemio Sacaguing of the National Bureau of Investigation, the agency tasked with investigating the incident, would confide to reporters their initial finding – that the ambushes were masterminded by a very senior police official. His only other clue – the official was one of the highest ranking officers in Manila. Needless to say, that finding was never reflected in the official NBI report. In 1999, almost ten years after the second attempt on Prudente’s life, five Manila policemen were convicted for the Prudente ambush. With that, authorities declared the case closed, although one would wonder why five ordinary policemen would take it upon themselves to repeatedly try to kill a prominent leftist; somehow it felt like authorities took the easy route of bagging the triggermen while letting the mastermind get away.
The practice at the time was for the night shift reporters to cover the whole of Metro Manila. So when the sun went down, my beat expanded from Manila to the whole metropolis. This meant I was responsible for an area that covers more than a dozen cities and municipalities. How my office expected me to cover all of this alone was way beyond my comprehension.
Print coverage that time was worlds away from TV coverage. We print reporters had no vehicles, or living allowances, so we didn't do the rounds of all ten police precincts in Manila. We simply couldn’t afford it. The TV guys, naturally, went around with their service vans and porta-lights, thrilling cops and criminals with the idea of instant fame and celebrity. Lowlife like print reporters had to hope that cops appreciate the written word enough to buy a publication, even a tabloid. Many times I would find that a policeman had no idea what a Chronicle was, or that it was a newspaper, or that it was a publication that was adjudged Number One in Readership Quality. Still, every thirty minutes or every hour, I would lift the ancient phone in the press office and call each of Manila’s ten police stations, and every police district headquarters, introduce myself and my newspaper, and ask if there was anything interesting developing. On the other hand, the TV reporters, with their cameramen, drivers, and news vehicles, could afford to bounce around the city while looking as fresh as a daisy. Simply put, it was a pretty lonely job. The only connection you had to your office was a small press card and an occasional paycheck. That’s why most print guys generally stayed at the press office of the western police district headquarters in UN Avenue. It was tedious and boring work, looking for a story that could force a remat in a political-business paper.
It sounds so much like “press office” coverage, where reporters stay at the press office and occasionally make calls to contacts to ask for news. Today, I would tell reporters to avoid that practice and go out and search for enterprise stories. But today, we are all wired to each other and to contacts with cellular phones. Two decades ago, the cellphone did not exist, the beeper was still years away, and the working public telephone was an occasional blessing. Really, finding a working payphone then was already reason for celebration. If you have to cover the whole Metropolis alone at night with no telephone or vehicles at a time of bombings, assassinations, and coup attempts, you are always afraid of stepping away from the pack, even for a while, and missing the biggest story of the year. I remember, at the end of each night’s coverage, feeling very exposed and uncertain because I had been out of the loop for even just an hour or two. I would only feel relieved once I am back in the press office and able to check on all the police districts in Metro Manila.
One time, in the middle of the night, a bunch of reporters announced they were off to the massage parlor for a free massage, among "other" things. Not that they had any freebies really coming to them. There are reporters who simply assume that they can walk into a beerhouse or massage parlor and get everything on the house because of their connections with the local station commander or the vice squad. It was a pretty sleazy arrangement for many police reporters, but bear in mind that this happens in a much larger and grander scale among, for example, clean-looking and famous and famously hard-hitting newscast anchors and program hosts, or big network bosses, the only difference being that they probably go to places where the toilets smelled a lot cleaner and actually had toilet seats.
They even invited me along, which probably meant I had been in the night shift too long. I declined, saying it was dangerous, since the Manila police had been busy lately raiding sauna baths that were fronts for prostitution. For that, I got laughed at. There are some perks that come with living in Manila’s dark underbelly.
Seeing my hesitance, one reporter bragged that he once made a reluctant masseuse strip and attend to his earthly needs simply by mentioning to her that he was tight with the vice cops.
I remember the Christmas party of the press corps. It was held someplace in San Marcelino Malate, with WPD chief Alfredo Lim as the special guest of honor. Naturally, the organizers of the press corps party also arranged for a bunch of girls to strip for the press corps as part of wishing everyone a very merry Christmas. But this was the time when the Manila police was cracking down on girlie joints, and raids were being conducted by General Lim's men left and right. The party was supposed to start in the early evening, but the time passed and people, including the good general, were getting restless - the girls had not yet arrived. Finally, someone broke the news: the girls were frightened by the presence of the Manila police chief, and had refused to come. Duly apprised of the situation, General Lim rose to the occasion and ordered his men to make sure the reporters were properly entertained. After an hour, the police van arrived, and onto the stage marched... the Discovery girls! Hauled from a popular girlie bar along Magsaysay Boulevard, the girls promptly gyrated and stripped to the hearty hooting and clapping of the reporters and their guests, including the chief of the Manila police. Such are the ironies of life.
On occassion, a "big" story would come up, and we would all rush to the latest tragedy of some poor father, wife, or son. Since I had no vehicle, and no money to get a cab, and since many of these crimes took place in the nooks and crannies of Manila, I would just jump into the vehicle of any friendly reporter. Getting to the crime scene was no problem. Getting back sometimes was.
One time, we rode with another reporter to a crime scene in some remote part of Paranaque. Unfortunately, I lost track of time, and got left behind by the rest of the reporters. It was past midnight, and I remember worrying where in the world I was in Paranaque, and how I could get back to Manila.
It was also interesting watching how police reporters work. In a way, we were part of the metro’s underworld, living off the stagnation and decay that the comfortable would rather ignore. After all, no one wants to have anything to do with a policeman unless a crime is committed and you are the victim. Policemen, in their dirty, grimy, humid precincts, are for those people who live in dirty, grimy, humid shanties. The rich and powerful are isolated in their gated and fenced communities, with their own blue guards with gasoline for their mobile patrols and radios that really worked. It was a rare treat when we see one of the rich and well-off in the precincts, their clean and moisturized skin glistening and uncomfortable and irritated by the stale air that we breathed into our lungs every night. There were times when I felt like telling these visitors, perhaps rather unfairly, “Welcome to our world. Did you even know we exist?”
Police reporting has its own subculture. It was a “masculine” world, although there were a good number of female police reporters. I don’t use the word masculine in a sexist sense. It was simply a world skewed heavily against the female gender. Female police reporters were sexually harassed with such regularity that the older ones had refined the put-down to an art form. Sometimes, police officers and lowly bureaucrats hit on them with the subtlety of a bull in heat. I know of one female reporter whose feminine charms so overwhelmed one local official that he chased her around his office table. Naturally, no complaint was ever filed. You can hardly complain about your sources, when a big part of your job actually demands that you court them, woo them, and make them think of you every time they have a story to tell, and even when they don’t.
So it was part of the risks of the craft that a good number of female police reporters became romantically involved with this police officer, or that local official. Perhaps romantic is too generous a word; often, it was more like two people realizing they both had something the other needed.
Again, the TV people had a clear advantage here over their print brethren. The TV girls, naturally, looked like goddesses to the bottom feeders in print. It was a rare day when a female TV reporter would waft into the press office; on days like those, time would slow to a crawl and the birds would start chirping outside the press office window and the window blinds seemed to open up a little more to let the sunlight in. At least, until the TV reporter opens her mouth. But while the TV girls were obviously more attractive magnets for the maniacs in uniform, their TV persona also offered them some sort of invisible protection. It’s like the beauty queen syndrome; everyone drools after them, but few would actually try to court one. There’s that unsaid and unmentionable feeling that only the big bosses get these types of girls. On the other hand, everyone tries to hit on the girl next door.
TV people also have that “power” that print people don’t have. People know them by their first name, smile at them in the mall, recognize their faces in the crowd. People actually want to be interviewed by them, no matter how silly their questions can sometimes be. What this means is that many sources really want to be meet these journalists. On the other hand, the print guys have to scrape and beg for a short interview. You can see it even now. Shine a bright light, point a camera, and poke a microphone at a minor official, and he starts jabbering giddily, spouting all sorts of quotables to the most inane questions, often in tortured english. Sometimes, you don’t even have to ask a question. Many times, it’s even hard to get them to stop talking. But replace the lights and camera with a reporter with a notepad or a tape recorder, and, unless the source is politically savvy, you’d be lucky if the source even bothers to acknowledge him. What this means is that the female police print reporter sometimes has to put herself at a clear disadvantage, because she has to go the extra mile to be extra nice and friendly and charming. It’s something that is easily misconstrued.
Also, the TV girls naturally move around with an entire TV crew, complete with camera, lights, microphone, and makeup kit. Given this fact of life, the source is seldom alone with the TV reporter. Even if he was, the thought that the camera crew is just waiting outside the door is enough to dampen the libido of many wannabee lotharios. A TV team and its equipment are intimidating to a lot of sources. In contrast, a demure female print reporter will be all alone when she finally bags an appointment with this or that official. She is armed only with a notepad and a pen; no threatening cameras and crew. In all likelihood, she is also a rookie.
Having said all that, there are some female reporters who have managed to walk that thin line and come out on top. These are the reporters who have learned to parry the advances without offending the advancer, who have learned to be just a little flirtatious and charming without appearing inviting. It really is a thin line, and the sharp edge can cut both ways.
There’s that stereotype of the police reporter that we all tried to resist, but eventually fell into as the months went by. The most obvious was that drawl that many of us affected when we spoke on the phone, especially to policemen or other reporters. It was a drawl that sounds halfway between drunk and bored, a tambay’s drawl perhaps, as if to show that I’m cool and unconcerned even if the world ends tonight, but lemme check what’s happening on your side of the world anyway. We’d draw out the word “Sir” into “Seeerrrr….” The tone was set on a deadpan monotone. And of course, there was the cussing and the bragging and the loud voices, and the gambling and the whoring and the petty corruption all around you that you have to treat with a blasé attitude. I stepped on someone’s brains yesterday. Oh really? Was it warm? Or, I was whoring the whole night last night. Today’s another day.
But it was the least obvious that was the more alarming. The experience ate away a little bit of our humanity, each one of us, in different degrees, and few of us would ever admit to it. Anyone who immerses himself deeply into this side of the city absorbs a part of it, and leaves a part of himself as well. The irony is that in losing a bit of our humanity, some of us, I hope, came away a little more human, a little more conscious of our frailties and faults. It was a frightening gamble, because after a while it became clear that many of us simply lost our humanity without gaining anything in return. Remember the idealism of college, where we were taught to wield the mighty power of the pen with great circumspection, to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afficted? We who lived in the dark who were supposed to give it light, have begun throwing our own darker shadows.
I remember one night in particular. A man was inconsiderate enough to get stabbed to death. Or, at least he was considerate enough to get stabbed during my watch. I rushed to the Philippine General Hospital with a photographer from another newspaper. I don’t recall why I was even there, since the story would never have made the Chronicle’s pages. Perhaps I had hitched a ride in the photog’s service vehicle.
Anyway, we rushed to the morgue, where the poor fellow lay on a gurney, cold and stiffening. Unfortunately for the photog I was with, the doctors or the first responders had already removed the knife from the dead man's chest. Naturally. What doctor leaves the knife in the chest while attempting treatment?
The photog cussed and swore, and complained of inconsiderate doctors who made life more difficult for working stiffs like him to get good pictures of dead stiffs like that. What good was a photo of a stabbing victim if there was no knife to show? So the photog did the next best thing – he asked the mortician to produce the knife, and the mortician willingly obliged.
In hindsight, I now wonder why the murder weapon was with the mortician in the first place. This was long before the police force created the Scene of the Crime Operatives, or SOCO, and long long before hollywood cooked up CSI.
Okay, the photog told the mortician. Stick it back in. To the mortician’s credit, he hesitated. Then, to my amusement, he stuck the blade back into the knife wound. Thwack. Just like that. No complaints from the victim, of course. And at least the mortician had the decency not to make a new stab wound. There was no one in the room except for me, the photog, the mortician, and the dead guy. The photog snapped happily away, and we left with the knife still sticking out of the man’s body. The guys from that CSI show would have gone into epileptic fits. The fact that I was amused and not shocked spoke volumes of my frame of mind at the time.
There’s also a popular story that went the rounds of the WPD. It’s a fact that many reporters and photogs like to beat up crime suspects who are in police custody. Why do they do it? Perhaps it's considered a rite of passage, perhaps it's a show of mindless machismo; perhaps it's a vent for all the frustrations that have built up from seeing all the mindless blood and gore of Manila at night. Or perhaps it's simply mindless. Whatever the case, it is not unusual for reporters to beat a suspect black and blue, in front of the arresting policemen. Naturally, the suspects cower in fear and don't fight back. I would really hate to be a suspect.
One night, the popular story goes, a reporter rushed to the press office. Hey there’s a crime suspect at the theft and robbery section, he tells the rest. So the reporters and photogs rush to the theft and robbery section, where they come across a man standing there alone. There was no policeman, so naturally, everyone started beating the poor fellow up. And on cue, the policeman comes back from the john, and finds everyone ganging up on the man. Stop, the cop says, that's not the suspect. That’s the victim.
The story always draws a lot of laughs, but it brings home a sticky point. Some reporters like to say that the criminals deserve to be beaten up, especially if it involves crimes against children. I have seen, personally, both reporters and cameramen from print, television, and radio, beating up suspects while police officers watch with delight. Some of them were even my own cameramen. And to be honest, I have, on occasion, been tempted to throw in a few kicks and punches myself. After twenty or so years, I still have not given in to that temptation, but it is always there, lurking, maybe waiting for a moment of weakness. How do I explain that feeling? I don’t consider myself a particularly violent person, although I have seen quite a lot of it delivered to people both deserving and undeserving. But what makes a man want to lash out and beat another man to a pulp? How much motivation does it need? Or is it motivation we really need? Could it be that in our deepest, baser recesses, what we really look for is not motivation, but an excuse. Oh yeah, he’s accused of raping a kid. Then a hand lashes out and connects with a nose or a brow, then another, and a few moments later, a man is barely able to see because of his swelling eyelids. Oh he snatched a purse. And a foot lashes out at a groin. Granted these men have been accused of crimes. But some of those who choose to inflict vigilante punishment on them have, if I recall, been guilty of baser offenses: the reporter who extorts from cops and establishments; or perhaps the photog who uses a masseuse’s body for free by threatening her with his connections.
But more than anything, this country is infamous for a law enforcement system that is so inefficient and ineffective, where there is never a guarantee that the man the cops haul off to the precinct is likely to be the man who deserves to go to jail. Woe to the man who is hauled off in front of the cameras by the police as a suspect – he is just as likely to be innocent as he is guilty.
Anyone who has watched any of the primetime newscasts must by now be familiar with the most common scene in police reporting. Whether the crime is rape, acts of lasciviousness, snatching, or petty theft, the cameras almost always seem to catch the exact moment when the victim and the suspect face off in the police station, and the victim, in a fit of anger, lashes out and slaps or punches the suspect in the face. The suspect reels, but remains silent, with his head bowed in embarassment and submission. Has anyone ever wondered how cameramen can be so skilled in timing that they always catch that money shot? It’s standard fare in police reports. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that it would be unusual if the story doesn’t have that shot.
The truth of the matter is that the suspect is often already sitting in a corner of a dingy cell when the reporters arrive at the station with their cameras and mikes. If the reporter is lucky, the victim is seated in front of the detective’s desk, giving a statement. First question out of the reporter’s lips often is: Where’s the suspect? Then, can you bring him out to face his accuser?
That’s all still peachy at this point. Then come the other commands from the journos – point out the suspect for the cameras! Come closer! Can you turn this way? Then, the inevitable. Is it true he molested you? Are you going to let him get away with that? Well, hit him! This is your chance! On the face!
Usually, and to her credit, the victim hesitates, as if unsure if she is really allowed to do just that. But the cameras are rolling, the lights are on, and the reporters are goading, so it must be acceptable, right? So maybe she lashes out with a nice slap on the suspect’s face. The suspect barely feels it. Or maybe the cameraman wasn’t ready for that shot. Maybe the camera lights weren’t on yet. Or maybe the reporter just isn’t happy enough with that angle. Or that slap. Do it again! Harder! And the victim begins getting in the mood, and draws in before letting loose with a snappier slap. Sometimes, it would take several slaps and punches, or several takes, before the camera teams are happy with their footage, and the suspect is led away to his jail cell, the victim takes her seat again, and the camera team leaves in search of another crime to report, or perhaps another crime to commit. The suspect retires to a corner of his cell, no doubt hoping that there aren’t any more camera teams on duty that night. I would really hate to be wrongly accused of anything when there are newsteams around.
And there was the petty corruption. This was a time when there was still an absolute ban on all forms of pyrotechnics. Typically, policemen would haul in a huge cache of confiscated firecrackers in the weeks running up to Christmas. It was not unusual for reporters covering the story to ask for some "samples" of the confiscated goods, and neither was it unusual for cops to give them away, or take home some for themselves. So whenever there was a big haul of firecrackers, reporters would rush to the precinct responsible for the confiscation to report on this blatant criminal violation of the country’s anti-firecracker laws. Then after the coverage, the reporters, myself included, would often leave with bags full of firecrackers, courtesy of the friendly station commander.
The same courtesy also extends to other less harmless hauls. I remember one night when a reporter came back to the press office with some marijuana. Marijuana, then as now, is illegal. The stuff was confiscated by police from drug addicts somewhere in Manila, and the cops divided the loot and gave some to the reporters. This guy generously offered to light up a joint for the rest of the bunch, but someone wisely pointed out that the press office was right behind the front desk of the WPD, and it may be a bit embarrassing for everyone, especially if we didn’t offer any to the desk officer on duty. So we all went to another empty room elsewhere in the WPD headquarters to try this new stash. Suffice it to say that the first joint I ever tried was smoked inside the headquarters of the Manila Police, courtesy of Manila's Finest. It must have been a particularly fine joint, because I don't even remember getting a buzz.
There’s a certain sadness in covering the police beat that takes a certain kind of reporter to discern. Despite the occasional action, one is always face to face with the ordinary sadness of ordinary life and ordinary death. In fact, the real danger is of death becoming so ordinary to people who are always exposed to it, and therein lies the real sadness. Too many police reporters have become so immune to emotion that they can stick a knife back into a dead body just to make for a better photograph. Its a tragedy partly borne of the stereotypes formed around reporters in general and police and war reporters in particular. If the British stereotype is the stiff upper lip, the reporter stereotype is the stoic, heartless, emotionless, and detached observer. Many take the stereotype a step further, adding cruel, inebriated, loud, and insensitive to the mix of descriptions. Your father died? Tough luck, life is cheap. Your sister got raped? Was she asking for it? Don’t get me wrong; I am describing the stereotypes that a lot of reporters have been trying to fit into. I’m describing what is, not what should be. In covering the joys and travails of humanity, we seem to have lost our own sense of humanity as well.
That’s why you have a lot of reporters who try to swagger like their nuts are too big, who belch loudly, scratch publicly, and use profanity like they were badges of honor, who act like bad boys because they think that's what they have to do to look like reporters. The truth is that the loud ones are usually the more cowardly louts, while the really brave reporters just go about their business quietly. Its like your dick - if its not big enough, you feel the need to keep pointing to it just to remind people you have one.
Most of the stories we generated at night were crime stories, with an occasional feature thrown in. But there were other things we witnessed that never saw print, at least not the way it should have. On many an occasion, we were witness to a practice called zoning. They also call it the “saturation drive,” which makes it sound as harmless as a newspaper drive. What happens is that police operatives cordon off a particular area in, say, a squatter community. Everyone who happened to be in that “zone” was then picked up and hauled off to the police station for questioning. It’s a throwback to the hamletting system established by the Americans during the Vietnam War, adapted to the Philippine counterinsurgency war, and later adapted to the anti-crime fight in urban areas. The logic, if you could call it that, was that you could identify a criminal because of the way he looked, even if he wasn’t performing a crime at that time. Of course the police never put it that way, but it was obvious that that was the logic. Hundreds of bareshirted grimy sweaty men were hauled off like cattle to the nearest precinct to be inspected for gang tattoos or drug paraphernalia and weapons. There, they would squat on the floor, their elbows on their knees, their tattoos screaming in wild red green, purple and blue swirls, their eyes darting around as police picked out their likeliest suspects. Once in a while, some weapons would be found, and an arrest would be made. But for the rest of those unceremoniously dragged off from their families just so they could be “invited for questioning,” it was just another night of harassment by the police. After the zoning incident, they would just be told to go home, as if nothing happened. No apologies necessary. It’s as if to say that it’s just part of our job to treat you like cattle just to make sure the rest of Metro Manila is safe, and it’s part of your role to be get hauled off to the station and be treated like mindless obedient cows. Surprisingly few people ever lodged complaints, even though it was a gross violation of rights. Imagine doing that to residents of ritzy Dasamarinas Village in Makati. Oh the fury and the indignation of the human rights violations! But of course, you won’t find criminals there, right? At least not of this small caliber. They would only be here in Balut, Tondo, plotting with the rest of the great unwashed for the overthrow of the pink-skinned and the freshly scrubbed. Yet like those before us, most of us took the practice for granted, satisfied with just recording the number of arrests and the weapons found, if any, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to arrest and detain an entire community just because we didn’t like the soap they used, or because they couldn’t afford soap at all.
I turned twenty on my first month on the job, in November 1987. For my birthday celebration, Gerry hauled us off to Quiapo for a double feature in one of the seedy moviehouses that featured x-rated inserts in b-movies. That was how I spent my birthday, watching Scorpio Nights and some other forgettable film [who cares about titles? we weren't there to critique the storyline anyway] in a hot and humid moviehouse where most of the audience would rather stay standing than sit on the hard sticky chairs. It’s like walking into a steam room, since the airconditioners were not working, and everyone was sweating from both the ambient temperature and the collective body heat. The guy playing the films didn’t bother with aesthetics. He had randomly spliced assorted x-rated clips of naked men and women with dirty soles [sorry, you can’t help but notice] huffing and puffing away into the double feature, without any regard as to whether the story still made any sense.
These moviehouses were known hangouts of closet queens and ageing male and female prostitutes who, for reasons you can very well imagine, can only peddle their wares in the dark, and Vincent had to fend off advances from people who were getting attracted to his balding pate which shone like a beacon in the moviehouse. The place stank, the air wet and humid, and we felt itchy all throughout the double feature. Afterwards, if I recall correctly, we graduated to a small restaurant in one of Quiapo’s nooks for a quick cheap snack before our editors found out what we were up to.
It was a sad funny way to celebrate a birthday. But two decades later, we would look back at that day and remember it as one of the more memorable birthday celebrations I had. The cheapest, too.
Of my time in the police beat, I remember the Dona Paz tragedy with the most vividness and clarity, and the images always come back easily, perhaps too easily.
That Christmas Eve was particularly memorable, and it didn’t help that every morning for several weeks, I would see the dirty sneakers I had left outside our doorstep and be reminded of things that I would rather forget. I would always see those sneakers, and every time I would promise I would get around to washing the congealed blood off the soles before I finally bring them into the house. It would take months before I finally did that, yet I still did it gingerly, holding the sneakers under a gushing spigot and hoping that the water pressure would be enough to clean the shoes. After that, I think I dunked the pair into a bucket of soapy water and left them there for a few days. But it was not the images that would haunt me. It was the smell, a minor miracle considering how my wife says my olfactory senses died a long time ago. It was a smell that I kept remembering at the oddest and most inconvenient times, as if it was always there lurking, waiting to be resurrected at the slightest trigger. For a while, the memory of that smell terrified me, especially when it came at night.
I also covered much of the hearings by the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) on the culpability of officials of Sulpicio Lines for the disaster. Sulpicio officers were grilled repeatedly over charges of overloading and negligence. I was given the Marina assignment because the hearings were held in the Marina offices just across the WPD headquarters along UN Avenue.
Much was made of the issue of overloading because it was a safety issue. The Dona Paz was crammed with some 5,000 passengers, but its manifest listed only 1,500 passengers. What this meant was that there were 3,500 other passengers who were not listed in the Coast Guard manifest. What this also meant was that there was a huge likelihood that there were not enough safety devices like lifeboats of lifejackets to go around.
Ship overloaded,
Sulpicio admits
The Manila Chronicle
Jan. 1 1988
By Ed Lingao
Correspondent
An official of Sulpicio Lines, owners of M/V Dona Paz, yesterday virtually admitted that the ill-fated vessel was overloaded when it collided with the oil tanker Vector in Tablas Strait between Marinduque and Mindoro last Dec. 20.
Vicente Gambito, Sulpicio vice president, said they had compiled at least 600 names of passengers who were not included in the manifest.
“We’ve collected around 200 personal lists, with a total of around 600 names,” he said.
The Coast Guard-approved manifest listed 1,523 passengers and 58 crewmen. Only 26 survived the collision, considered the worse peacetime sea disaster.
This particular story, which saw print on the first day of 1988, drew the ire of Sulpicio officials. Days after it came out, one of Chronicle’s business/shipping reporters approached Vincent and myself to tell us that Sulpicio’s VP Vicente Gambito wanted to talk to us in person.
The meeting was arranged in a fancy French restaurant in Paco, Manila, whose name I could not pronounce. Being police reporters, we felt so out of place when we entered the restaurant, as if we had just walked in bare naked. Gambito invited us to a table and, without allowing us to warm our chairs, he proceeded to berate us for what he called inaccurate reporting.
In essence, Sulpicio was contesting our headline that they had admitted to overloading. What they had admitted to, he said, was that they had unlisted and unmanifested passengers. This is not the same thing as overloading. Overloading, he insisted, meant that the ship was no longer shipworthy because of the excess number of passengers on board. Perhaps overcrowding was the correct term.
We just stared at him, dumbfounded. I did not know what to say, or how to argue back. He may have had a point, technically speaking. The ship may have been overcrowded, but the more technical-minded may claim it was not necessarily overloaded. On the other hand, we felt that Sulpicio was splitting hairs to sidestep culpability. The point was that there were three times the number of allowed passengers on the ship. It was not a question of one or two passengers who were not listed in the manifest; it was a question of 3,500 people who were not in the list.
After his monologue, the Sulpicio official just stood up and left us. Apparently, he didn’t think that lowly correspondents deserved too much of his time or presence.
Then there was the question of which ship was responsible for the tragedy. The few survivors said that the Dona Paz rammed into the oil tanker M/T Vector, causing it to spill oil, which then caught fire and destroyed both ships. But Sulpicio would insist that the tanker rammed the left side of the Dona Paz, creating a huge gash that let water in. Panicking passengers rushed to the right side of the ship by instinct, causing it to list to the right and capsize into the burning sea. With both ships rusting at the bottom of the Tablas Straits, the truth may never be known.
The arguments would go back and forth, and litigation would cross continents for the next two decades. A class suit filed by the families of the victims failed to prosper because the filing fee was too large. These families banded together to form the Bulig Bulig Kita movement, or the Let Us Help Each Other movement. I haunted their offices in Quezon City constantly, talking and sympathizing with family members, all the time conscious that there were entire families who could not be represented here because they were all lost at sea.
The dead who were lucky enough to be recovered were placed in sealed metal boxes, which were then crammed inside wooden caskets. Having seen the bloated condition of the bodies in Funeraria Popular, I cannot and do not want to imagine how morticians were able to fit the bodies inside metal containers that could squeeze inside regular caskets.
All told, less than 300 bodies were recovered out of 5,000 souls. A few were returned to Manila, where a common funeral wake was held at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum in Manila. I remember the long lines of caskets on the basketball court of the stadium, with the small square glass window through which one normally views his deceased loved one. But instead of the calm face of the dead, you could only see the smooth burnished surface of galvanized tin. The metal containers began to bulge and leak because of pressure building inside that comes with decomposition, so there was a persistent smell of death. At one point, the Manila City government decided to close off the stadium for a day to fumigate the place and prevent an epidemic. I remember, after everyone had been asked to step out, peering inside the stadium and feeling my hair stand on end; the stadium’s strong vapor lights cut through the fog of chemicals descending on the caskets, creating a surreal scene in the middle of the basketball court. Suddenly, the death of 5,000 people was a very lonely affair.
After twenty years, most of my time as a police reporter is already a blur. I do remember much of the frustration and anger, and the sense of exploitation. We were, after all, asked to do so much, and paid so little. I would be lucky to get a thousand pesos a payday, and I was already considered one of the high earners among the correspondents. I remember, too many times, emerging from the Manila Chronicle office in Bonifacio Drive, or from the WPD headquarters along UN Avenue, and breathing a long heavy sigh. At night, I would try to keep myself busy in between calls to the various precincts and police district headquarters by burying my nose in a book. But you can only read so many pages before someone disrupts your reading with cussing and swearing and farting. It would have been nice to have the mobility to go around Metro Manila looking for enterprise stories at night, something I now encourage among reporters. But at that time, that was practically impossible for a solitary correspondent who had to cover the entire Metro Manila at night without a vehicle, a cellphone, pager, or radio, or an allowance, or even a guaranteed retainer. It was passive police reporting, I admit. The tabloids and TV reporters had it better; they had a service vehicle with a driver, two way radios, and a man in each district headquarters. At first I would hitch a ride with the tabloid jeeps whenever something broke. Later, I would hitch a ride more regularly with an ABS-CBN cameraman, Jun Lontoc. I remember that I would at times join the other tabloid reporters on their coverages, not because the story had any value to the Chronicle, but because it gave me a closer glimpse at another facet of life that I never see. Or perhaps I was already bored. On these trips, I would explore the dark alleys and warrens of Tondo and see a life that was worlds apart from the gated subdivisions of Quezon City.
I remember, after getting tired of swatting mosquitos while reading my book in the press office, emerging from the WPD headquarters for a breath of fresh air. I’d plop my ass down on the steps fronting the headquarters and take out a cigarette, my millionth for the night. There, I would watch the lights of vehicles flash by, count the roaches and the cigarette butts on the ground, and glance at the occasional crook that the cops would bring in, morbidly hoping that he had committed a crime sufficiently grave to be worthy of the Chronicle. I had to be selective with the crooks I cover; the Chronicle doesn’t write about just any crook and crime. So there I would stay for around half an hour, swatting at the mosquitos on the steps of the WPD, killing time until I had to return to swatting the mosquitos inside the press office.
By one in the morning, I knew there was already no way I could force a remat of the Chronicle even if the sky fell down. By that time, the night editor would also be either dead drunk or fast asleep or both. The newspaper had already been printed, and was about to be bundled off to newspaper distributors in Manila’s port area. That’s the only time I would shoulder my pack, step out of the WPD entrance one last time for that day, and walk briskly to Taft Avenue for a jeepney ride to Quezon City. If I was lucky, which was seldom, I could get a ride from Taft to faraway Tandang Sora in Quezon City. If I was unlucky, I would have to get another ride in Quiapo. At that time of the night, drivers wait for their jeeps to fill-up before being dispatched, so I had a lot of time to observe my fellow passengers, partly out of curiosity and partly out of the need to identify potential muggers early. This was long before the age of the call centers. The people who rode the jeeps at that time of the night were interesting people indeed. Some were bargirls getting off early, still heavy with make-up and the smell of cigarette smoke; others were night shift workers, tired and wasted, their heads lolling around before dropping down to their chest or on the poor fellow beside them before they suddenly jolt awake. You know the man beside you in the jeep is dead tired when he reaches up and grasps the rail on the jeepney ceiling, rests his head on the crook of his elbow and instantly falls asleep without ever letting go of the rail. I’ve done that myself several times, and thankfully, never had my pocket picked. And of course there were those who are headed home after a night of carousing, red-eyed and with breath stale with beer and yosi.
I would get off at the corner of Tandang Sora and Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. From there, I would walk some three or so kilometers to my home inside one of the subdivisions deep inside Tandang Sora. It wasn’t really a very long walk, although it could get tiresome if you have to do it at the end of each working day. By that time, it’s already 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, and the tricycles were no longer allowed inside most of Quezon City’s gated subdivisions. I could take a cab, but I couldn’t even afford the flag-down rate, much more take a cab every night. So every night, rain or shine, I would have to take a 30 to 45 minute walk home.
The walk was also an opportunity to de-stress and disengage from the world I left just an hour ago. I would play games with my mind, staying off the road and trying to blend with the shadows, avoiding the lamplight. I suppose there was a certain logic in my madness; I wanted to avoid getting spotted early by potential muggers. In those years, Tandang Sora was pretty much unpopulated, with tall cogon grass dominating both sides of the street. Everytime a vehicle would come up behind me, I would look down at the lengthening shadows so I could, without turning around, see if anyone was behind me.
On bad nights, it would rain hard. Since I had never made it a practice to bring an umbrella, I would just put on a jacket and a floppy hat, and walk home just like any other night except that I had to be more careful that passing cars don’t bump into me. I would get home soaking wet and shivering, but somehow feeling a little cleaner. I’d strip off my clothes and sit down with a heavy sigh.
And it wasn't a sigh of relief. With that sigh comes a question oft repeated by many caught in this kind of life: would there ever be more to my life than chasing ambulances and making a living off the dying? Such is a reporter's life, but coming from college, it was easy to rebel.
After half a year, I finally did. I told Cris that I had had enough of being exploited, enough of living like a bat. So I resigned, vowing never to return to journalism, and promising to find a job that would make plenty of money with as little work possible. Chris had a knowing smile on her face. She said, ok, just come back when you want. Maybe she knew something I didn't.
From journalism, I jumped to corporate public relations. I joined the PR machine of the defunct Magnolia, a company that made ice cream, fruit juices, and soft drinks. The pay was good, the working hours were much better, and the people actually looked and smelled clean. I lasted two months.
I have nothing against corporate PR, but it was extremely difficult for me to make the transition from my world to theirs. Their world revolved around ice cream and fruit juice, and the never-ending battle against the competition. Of course, much later I would get a taste of that myself with the never ending battle between ABS-CBN and GMA, but that was far in the future. I was with people who would rather die of thirst than drink a glass of the competition's softdrink. I was supposed to think Magnolia every waking minute, and even when I was asleep. It was too much for me.
So when I came crawling back to Cris, she gave me that knowing smile again, as if to say, we’ve been waiting for you, you lasted longer than we expected. Without a question, she threw me back into the fray, and I started getting more assignments, even from the lifestyle section. It was almost inconceivable, a police reporter writing for Sunday lifestyle, the chronicle's famed features section.
Things changed somewhat when I returned to the Chronicle. I was still assigned to cover the WPD, but I was beginning to get more assignments during the daytime. That may not sound like a big deal to most, but it was at the time. Daytime meant making the normal deadlines, and getting to write more stories, and actually seeing them in print. Daytime work also meant I wouldn’t have to live with the ghouls at midnight, and I could have some of my life back.
After months of living like a bat among cavemen, it was refreshing to work with daylight all around you. Items were so much clearer, although issues were not. Why, now you could actually see the gunshot wound! There was a lot more variety in the kinds of stories you could tackle. In working the day shift, I began covering less of the dead and more of the living.
Nemesio Prudente was one of the luckiest persons in Manila. He’s been the subject of countless assassination attempts. Now, those two statements may sound like a contradiction. But the fact is that despite so many attempts on his life, the president of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines lived through all of them, to simply expire of old age in a Cavite hospital in March 2008.
When I first joined The Chronicle, Prudente had just been the target of another ambush attempt. On November 10 1987, unknown gunmen shot his car full of holes near the Lambingan bridge in Santa Ana as he rode to his office at the PUP campus in Santa Mesa. In doing so, they also put some holes in Prudente himself, but not enough to kill him. It was Prudente’s lawyer who was killed in that ambush.
Then on June 30 1988, or less than a year after the first ambush, gunmen peppered his convoy with some more bullets. Prudente was badly wounded, but survived the attempt. Three of his bodyguards who were riding in the lead car did not.
It was puzzling for the uninitiated. Professional hitmen trying to kill a school president? Was it an argument over grades? Prudente had created a lot of enemies among the resurgent right even before the shaky Cory years. Prudente had served as PUP president from 1962 to 1972, when it was still known as the Philippine College of Commerce. That early, the nationalist and outspoken Prudente, who encouraged activism and nationalism in the school, was already targeted by elements from the Marcos military and police. So when Martial Law was declared in 1972, Prudente was one of the first to be arrested and thrown in jail.
When Cory took power in 1986, Prudente was reappointed to his old position in the renamed Polytechnic University of the Philippines, or PUP. Prudente never forgot his old mission of spurring the student body into a more active and militant role in politics and society. But his enemies never forgot him either. Rightist elements suspected that Prudente had allowed the left to use the PUP campus as a base for leftist rebels and assassination squads as well.
It was a hairy time to belong to the legal left. Rightist hitmen were assassinating leftist leaders and labor leaders. Kilusang Mayo Uno chairman Rolando Olalia was tortured and mutilated before he was finally murdered, his body dumped in an empty lot in Antipolo with his underwear stuffed in his mouth. Young activist Lean Alejandro also met the same fate. Rightists in the police and military, the same people who tried to topple Marcos before they were saved by People Power, were now putting immense pressure on the Aquino government to let go of suspected leftists in her cabinet. The pressure would occasionally find an outlet in the numerous coup attempts against Cory. In the first three years after Edsa, the Cory government always seemed to be tottering on the brink of collapse, as the security forces tasked with defending the new democracy were always of suspect loyalty. Two years into the new government, Cory had to use a pressure valve. Acceding to demands from the right, she let go of Labor Secretary Augusto “Bobbit” Sanchez, Presidential Spokesman Rene Saguisag, and Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo. This stabilized the situation somewhat, at least until the next coup attempt in 1989.
But the rightists weren’t the only ones with death squads. This was also the heydey of the Alex Boncayao Brigade, the communist hitsquad more popularly known as the sparrow unit. Young sparrows would case police and military officers accused of crimes against the people, and shoot them down in broad daylight when the opportunity arose.
This had also been the problem in Davao City in the last years of the Marcos regime. The sparrows had free reign over the city, assassinating their enemies at will – at least until government found a solution: vigilante justice.
Local police and military officials organized vigilante squads and hunted the sparrows down. Thus was organized the infamous Alsa Masa, the Force of the Masses, a group of paramilitaries answerable only to their police and military handlers. The Alsa Masa movement was whipped into a frenzy by a popular AM radio announcer in Davao named Jun Pala, who paraded around town with a pistol tucked into his waist.
Borrowing from the experience of the Alsa Masa, the Manila Police under then Brig. Gen. Alfredo Lim organized its own vigilante force, headed by the colorful police commander of the Tondo District.
Colonel Romeo Maganto is neither telegenic nor photogenic. Yet he was probably the best known and most sought after [at least by the media] policeman in Metro Manila in the late eighties because of his quotable quotes and his propensity for staging dramatic performances for the press. Maganto is short, dark and stocky, and tends to talk to everyone like a policeman interrogating a suspect. But in that sense, he was perfect for his new role as the godfather of Metro Manila’s anti-communist vigilante force. To him, it seemed, everyone was guilty of something until proven innocent. Communists were peering from every street corner, just waiting for the right time to assault us with quotes from Karl Marx or Mao’s little red book. Like most people, he probably wasn’t really a rabid anti-communist; he was just a man who rabidly went after whoever his superiors said were the enemy. Thus, the raids on squatter colonies and the “zoning” became more frequent, as police operatives turned the squatter shanties inside out to hunt down the sparrows. In all these raids, no sparrow was ever arrested, although a whole lot of people lost a lot of sleep, not because they were guilty of assassinating enemies of the people, but because they simply didn’t smell good enough. But then again, who could complain? Certainly not Manila’s jaded press.
I remember one weekend, when Maganto invited media to his Police Station 1 in Tondo for a photo-op of him and his men training his vigilantes in the fine art of killing people. In a makeshift shooting range at the back of the station, Maganto and assorted wannabees hefted .45 caliber pistols and bravely dry-fired at paper targets for the cameras, pretending they were criminals, leftists, and perhaps mediamen. Naturally, some mediamen with their pot-bellies and their oversized sunglasses, joined in to show off their pieces. They lined up as well and proudly dry-fired at the paper targets, pretending they were evil editors and deskmen, or cheapskate police station commanders. Of course, Maganto, with his grim countenance and his shiny .45 pistol, ended up splashed all over the front pages of Metro Manila’s dailies the next day. I suppose that was also his intention. But Maganto also miscalculated. The ensuing outcry from the photographs of armed vigilantes in Metro Manila streets forced the government to clamp down on Maganto, preventing him from arming his gang of volunteers. In the end, Maganto agreed to just arm his volunteers with nightsticks. Still, the zoning of squatter communities continued.
Thus, it was hardly a surprise that someone with that bad an aim would want to kill Prudente that badly. Months after the 1987 assassination attempt on Prudente, Attorney Artemio Sacaguing of the National Bureau of Investigation, the agency tasked with investigating the incident, would confide to reporters their initial finding – that the ambushes were masterminded by a very senior police official. His only other clue – the official was one of the highest ranking officers in Manila. Needless to say, that finding was never reflected in the official NBI report. In 1999, almost ten years after the second attempt on Prudente’s life, five Manila policemen were convicted for the Prudente ambush. With that, authorities declared the case closed, although one would wonder why five ordinary policemen would take it upon themselves to repeatedly try to kill a prominent leftist; somehow it felt like authorities took the easy route of bagging the triggermen while letting the mastermind get away.
Great read!
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to buy the book. Ang galing mo, Mr. Ed Lingao!
ReplyDelete- raymond lim toledo
Bok, hantayin ko yung libro :)
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