kadarating pa lang ni michael ray aquino, pinawalang-sala na niya sina erap at ping in the dacer-corbito murders. at wala daw siyang alam tungkol sa kaso. of course no one believes him, least of all the dacer sisters.
read too:
Dacer-Corbito case will not be closed without Tan Testimony
and for timeless links and a host of unanswered questions:
the dacer whodunit and why ping
almost everyone’s saying senator panfilo aka “ping” lacson should surrender and prove his innocence in court instead of forever playing the unfairly accused fugitive. but when i think of the vizconde massacre and how there is so much reasonable doubt as to the guilt of hubert webb et al and yet they’ve been in jail for 15 years now and counting, i can’t blame lacson for staying away. lalo na after rereading my september 2009 post, the dacer whodunit. at the time there were still all sorts of questions and allegations re two ex-presidents who were known to be closely involved with dacer. questions that have not been addressed or answered, at least not in public. tipong bigla na lang, basta, si lacson ang mastermind, sabi kasi ni mancao. but i find it hard to believe that ping acted on his own and not on orders of a higher-up, if indeed he had anything to do with the double murder.
***
Antonio Carpio’s Dacer’s killers: Who and why?
politicaljunkie’s A few things you might find interesting about the Bubby Dacer case
Herman Tiu Laurel’s The forgotten angle
Fel Maragay’s Man in white
Michael Lim Ubac’s Lacson: Estrada, Palace want me in jail
Torn and frayed in Manila’s Were Ninoy Aquino and Bubby Dacer killed on presidential orders?
Ducky Paredes’ Ping Lacson ??!?
Newsbreak Online’s Timeline:The Dacer-Corbito Murders and the BW Scam
Asian Journal’s Dacers file civil case vs. Estrada, Lacson
this fwded email arrived in my inbox the saturday of ondoy, just before the lights went out. it has since been been posted in several blogs, one of which drew a comment asking if it was really from boyu. as he’s a friend from way back, i emailed him to confirm, and he said, YES, it’s authentic. worth a read again.
once more with Feeling
My name is Boyu, short for Boy Yuchengco, aka Alfonso SyCip Yuchengco, Jr.
A couple of days after Senator Lacson’s “privilege” i was contacted by one of our security people who had spoken with a former PAOCTF member. This PAOCTF agent confirmed basically what we knew even then. It was me Estrada had ordered “kidnapped”. Yes, kidnapped, not just arrested. And Yes, Me, not my brother, Tito.
Due to their Low INTEL, they mistook my brother for me, primarily due to the fact that my brother, Tito, and i have the same first name – “Alfonso”. I, the JR, and he, the Third. The nickname “Boy” is given to the Juniors in the family. My brother, who worked at the Bank at the time, being also named after my father, ‘they’ simply assumed was the “Boy”, the Junior. They could not imagine that there was another ‘Alfonso son’ lurking around in the vault.
As a result, when these men came to the Bank looking for “Boy Yuchengco”, all they got was, “Boy Yuchengco? There’s no Boy Yuchengco here.” Wish someone in RCBC had also asked them, “You sure you have the right Bank?” Ha!
Media in general, and INQUIRER, in particular, have this thing where they just can’t understand why my father never went after Estrada “long after the intimidation factor disappeared following Estrada’s ouster from the presidency”. (Quote from Inquirer editorial)
Well, why do you think the Chinese are favorite victims of KFR gangs and Government crooks? One, we will do anything for our children, especially when our SONS are threatened, especially when the SON involved is the favorite SON.
Two, even if Estrada had been ousted from the presidency, who says the “intimidation factor had disappeared”? Remember, you guys Set Your Criminals Free! Free to commit more crimes, more intimidation. Free to send their goons after us.
Three, We Chinese are not Ninoy. We have learned, that in the Philippines, “Kami ay laging Nag-iisa!” We cannot expect help or protection from the authorities seeing as to how it is the authorities who tend to come after us.
Can you all not see the Fear Factor involved? If you still cannot, then, i doubt very much you guys will ever be able to reform anything in this country
The next curiosity noted – “But, they were paid!”. Forgetting that this is very much beside the point when the person didn’t want to sell to begin with.
I have told some in media that they should look into the history of PLDT. This because once people know the history, know how tied to my father PLDT was from the time the Americans owned it, they might just understand why my father would never have wanted to let go of any of it.
It’s as if GSIS paid the Lopezes for MERALCO, even though the Lopezes never want to sell to GSIS and GSIS sent people to threaten the life of one of the Lopez scions to force the sale anyway.
Speaking of the Lopezes, when the TITA took over, they got everything back that Marcos took from them. No questions asked, no red tapes. However, the shares of PLDT taken from my father by Marcos (Yes, this happened once before!) and given to Cojuangco to hold in his (Marcos’) name is now even part of what was sold to First (Metro) Pacific by TbC.
“Tita TITA! Bakit kami hindi?” Was it because it involved a Cojuangco? Why the “Kamag-Anak Shuffle”? This is one reason i cannot kowtow to the TITA. Not that i blame her. She definitely was “Good People”, no doubt about it. However, she was too naive. And, she allowed a lot of people, relatives and others, to ruin what could have been a real honest-to-goodness bloodless revolution. One that could have finally changed Flip Society for the Better and “for GOOD”.
AS for the rest of the “story”. I do not have first hand knowledge as to what did or did not happen. I only know of the threat to me because i had been warned by one of my sisters then to lay low. Btw, another thing that showed “their Low INTEL” – Pretending to arrest me on “trumped-up drug charges” – was that it wouldn’t have worked. I was in ReHab then, had been for some time. In fact, i was already in the HalfWay House of New Beginnings when all that was happening. So, how does one arrest someone for drugs when the person is already inside the ReHab?
I am passing this information around for no other reason then to draw some of the flak from my father who is now quite old and a bit frail. I also want “them” to leave my brother alone. I also pass this around to remind people that it’s easy for Actors to pretend, to fool people, even the Santa Tita. But please don’t forget that the guy was, and is, a Gangster. Just look at his friends and “barkada”… You are who you hang out with.
Please pass this around. Are we all going to finally take a stand against the crooks in Government and the Private sector? Or, Nag-iisa lang ba kami ulit?
Btw, this missive in no way defends or sides with Senator Lac. As far as i’m concerned, they’re all crooks and should be locked up in the same cell. I-sama na rin ninyo si GrandMA.
BUT, when are the Filipino people ever going to do this? When are we going to start sincerely helping one another rather than claw & rip off one another?
When are we all ever going to learn and live the real meaning of “Maka-Tao” (‘Maki-Tao’)? When are we ever going to relearn the true sense of “Utang na Loob”, wherein we live for, and assist, one another because we care and not because we are being paid for it?
MaBuhay ang Pinoy! MaBuhay rin sana ang Tsinoy!
i had just typed in the title of this post and was making buwelo to share my thoughts on the lacson-estrada senate showdow in the context of the dacer-corbito murders nang nabulaga ako kay senador miriam defensor santiago looking good in a yellow suit (!) and in fighting form, taking on the u.s. of a. no less, president obama no less, and calling for the abrogation and renegotiation of the visiting forces agreement, yey, ang saya, it’s about time, mabuhay si miriam! that was a good speech, covered all the bases, a must-read for every thinking filipino who truly wants change. america is part of our problem. america is the elephant, the gorilla, the dambuhala in the room that we don’t talk about.
it is even said that you have to be amboy (amgirl) to win the presidency of the philippines. someone correct me if i’m wrong that estrada was the exception; he won even if america didn’t want him to win. and now that he’s bent on running for president again, i wouldn’t be surprised if america is helping either the administration or the opposition, or both, to harass him into dropping out of the race. which brings me back to the dacer case.
back in march, herman tiu laurel asked:
Why has the US opened the way for the return of Mancao and Dumlao at this time? Of course, we know that the US has always meddled in our affairs. But why this particular case?
Reliablemilitary intelligence sources we talked to insist that the affidavits of Mancao and Dumlao will implicate Estrada, as what Michael Ray Aquino’s will later do. They are convinced that this campaign, which involves the US, vividly betrays Uncle Sam’s fear of Estrada as being the only serious obstacle to its 2010 plan of installing a new Gloria Arroyo puppet in the guise of someone invited to Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast no less?
but, if so, it would seem that gma isn’t playing along with america, not the way the dept of justice is rather assiduously trying to pin the murders on lacson instead. so wazzup wazzup? what’s the deal between gma and erap? bati na ba sila? bakit nila pinagtutulungan si ping? even fvr’s joe almonte has jumped in, also making diin ping lacson based on dacer’s letters daw, and dacer allegedly having told a daughter that if anything were to happen to him, ping would be to blame.
and yet there are these very intriguing stories about fvr and almonte. check out politicaljunkie’s A few things you might find interesting about the Bubby Dacer case, which includes sol vanzi’s newsflash report about general almonte . . .
DACERS ASKED TO COMMENT ON PRIEST’S EXPOSE
Manila, April 9, 2001 – The family of public relations man Salvador “Bubby” Dacer was asked yesterday to comment on the statements of a Parañaque priest over the possible knowledge of former President Ramos and his national security adviser Jose Almonte in Dacer’s disappearance.
The opposition Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino said yesterday: “We appeal to the Dacer family to come out and confirm or deny Fr. (Gabriel) Baldostamon’s statement. We understand the pain they must feel at the continued disappearance of their father, but they must come out in order to help shed light on this matter. Don’t be afraid of Ramos and Almonte.”
Fr. Baldostamon is the parish priest of the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary church in Sun Valley Subd. where the Dacer family lives.
He claimed to have heard Almonte “consoling” the Dacer family that should they recover or “arrange” for Dacer’s release, they would spirit him out to the United States and make it appear that he was still missing.
Baldostamon said Almonte made the statement in a breakfast meeting with the Dacer family about 10 days after his disappearance.
“Did Almonte really say that?” the LDP asked. “If he did, he must explain his intentions for doing so and why did he sound as if he had contact with Dacer’s abductors?”
. . . and also herman tiu laurel’s Investigate Almonte, about president ramos.
The story is now told to close friends by the Dacer children, Ampy and Sabina, that the Ramos visit to Dacer’s office on that fateful day of the disappearance was very uncharacteristic. In the many years of Dacer and Ramos’ professional dealings, never once did Ramos visit Dacer’s office. But on the day of Dacer’s kidnapping Ramos did, and after only an hour of waiting he started making it too obvious he was concerned—by calling media about his alarm over Dacer’s disappearance.
It could have just been traffic, a flat tire or engine trouble, a sudden family emergency, a bum stomach, an extended breakfast meeting, or a hundred other small possibilities that delayed Dacer for an hour. With cell phone service the way it is today, and service providers undermining each other by delaying interconnections or with cell sites jammed or down, an hour’s wait to get a cell phone connection happens quite frequently. So, delayed cell phone contact is not sufficient reason to panic and call media . . .
so why haven’t the media been following up on these? takot ba sila kay almonte? takot ba sila kay fvr? what if ping and erap are innocent pala? and we’re just being taken for a ride? to what end?
of course it doesn’t make sense that dumlao and mancao are involved if it were an fvr-almonte operation. but we don’t know enough to rule anything out. even dumlao and mancao keep changing their statements daw. involved ba talaga sila, o nagpapanggap lang.
“Not known to many who are following this case, Cezar Mancao and Glen Dumlao, to date have executed three sworn statements each. In this case, the contents of the affidavits are modified at each turn, and it would take some patience and perhaps extra-professional expertise to separate the grains of truth from the specks of dirt in the testimonies given by both affiants,” Lacson said.
as for dacer himself, i have no idea how he operated or who his clients were, only that he was the top public-relations guy in political manila with awesome access to the media, and he could make anyone smell good and look good.
but i do have an idea what public relations work is like. you have to take your client’s side, with conviction, and you try not to take on clients with opposing positions para walang conflict of interest. that is, if you want to stay sane and whole and credible. easier said than done, i know, especially if you’re dealing with, and handling, presidents with huge egos. how do you say no to a president (former or incumbent) without incurring his royal ire. read fel maragay’s Man in White.
. . . Dacer, a handsome, bemoustached Spanish-looking mestizo, could hardly write journalistic pieces. But the glib-tongued Bicolano was gifted with exceptional social skills, a knack for befriending fellowmen—perhaps his most important asset that enabled him to climb to the top in his chosen profession. When big-time businessmen were locked in make-or-break competition or feud with rivals over a major project and they needed an expert in crisis PR, the name of Dacer would usually crop up. Crisis PR was his forte.
The flamboyant PR practitioner was often described as “the man in white” because he was always clad in an all-white attire. But his detractors snickered that he was the “devil in white” because of the devious scheme that he purportedly employed to attack the targets of some of his covert PR operations.
In the early 1990s, Dacer held office in a small corner at the ground floor of the Manila Hotel. But his enterprise started to ride high after Fidel Ramos assumed the presidency. He became the private publicist of Ramos and of Ramos’ most trusted Cabinet member, then National Security Adviser Jose Almonte. Not long after, Dacer transferred to a spacious room on the second floor of the hotel. He handled the PR work for the Swiss firm, Societe General de Surveillance, which had a P4-billion annual contract with the Bureau of Customs for the valuation of imported goods. He became a point man or liaison between the Philippines and Taiwan, a chore which he handled with gusto. His services were also tapped by several public officials and private individuals, as well as prominent business firms.
During the 1998 presidential elections, Ramos tried to persuade Dacer to help in the campaign of a principal ally, then House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. the Lakas standard-bearer. But Dacer begged off, opting to stay neutral because the strongest candidate, Joseph Estrada, was his kumpadre.
When Estrada became president, Dacer maintained cordial relations with him. He was occasionally asked by the then President to do some PR assignments for his administration. Dacer enjoyed easy access to the Palace, from time to time accompanying foreign businessmen during courtesy calls to the President in which investments plans were usually discussed. Dacer loved to tell people that his friendship with Estrada dated back to the days when he was a multi-awarded movie actor. Estrada played godfather when Dacer’s daughter Ampy was baptized. And when Ampy got married, Estrada was one of the wedding sponsors.
Despite his association with Estrada, the kind of political influence Dacer wielded at that time paled in comparison with the one he enjoyed during the Ramos presidency. Estrada somewhat kept him at a distance, perhaps because he was not sure of Dacer’s loyalty, due to his long association with Ramos and Almonte. When the Estrada government unleashed a persecution campaign against Ramos over the so-called multi-billion pesos Expo scam and other anomalies, Dacer clumsily watched from the sidelines, cautiously steering clear of the raging conflict between two men dear to him.
Dacer’s troubles began when he was dragged into the rift between then National Police director general Roberto Lastimoso and then Chief Supt. (now senator) Panfilo Lacson, who was at that time head of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force. Lastimoso’s hold on the top PNP post turned shaky amid allegation that he was remiss in his duty in going after a suspected drug lord. He sought Dacer’s help in the media war and the PR man came to his rescue. But Lastimoso lost the fight and was eventually replaced by Lacson as PNP chief . . .
in the end, minalas si dacer. maybe he knew too much. maybe he had become a threat. maybe he couldn’t be trusted anymore.
but what if the demolition job on ping lacson is more of the same, because he knows too much, because he has become a threat, the way he keeps shooting his mouth off in the senate.
in that case, i’d say he’s doing the right thing. i suggest a pahabol privilege speech on the bentain case, the fvr-almonte connection, even the american connection, and anything else relevant that he knows of. so if anything should happen to him (cross our fingers, knock on wood) we’d have a better idea whom (or whom-whom) to blame.