By Bulatlat.com
MANILA – In the unfolding case of apparent police and military involvement in jueteng and other crimes, how come the heat seems focused only on the “underlings?” Who are the people behind the supposed-legitimate operation now turning out to be a “rub-out,” an “ambush” or a “massacre”?
In a statement emailed to the media, the revolutionary Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) demanded a more thorough investigations into the apparent continued existence of what it calls as “the widespread politico-criminal network” in the Philippines. It alleged that this politico-criminal network’s “far-reaching web includes key officials of the Aquino government.” It called attention to the likelihood that “rival syndicates are using the police and military, including their top officials, to advance their criminal interests.”
Visible links to crimes
As soon as reports of the rubout came out, and criticisms poured in, Malacañang reportedly admitted it was aware of Coplan Armado, the state forces’ plan that resulted in the January 6 rubout. Malacañang said it knew about it through a proposal submitted by Supt. Hansel Marantan, chief of the Regional Special Operations Group (RSOG) under the Calabarzon Regional Police Office and Supt. Glenn Dumlao, head of the Calabarzon Public Safety Battalion which sought additional funding from the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) for the project. The PAOCC is headed by Aquino’s Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa.
In subsequent questioning of the involved police heads led by DILG Secretary Mar Roxas, the said “knowledge” and “support” of Malacañang was brushed aside.
But according to the CPP, “the rubout of the VicSiman group was an operation supported by the Aquino political ruling elite.” It called the police chiefs who conducted the said bloody operation as “underlings” linked to people or “kingmakers” directly serving President Benigno Aquino III.
Marantan, for example, is an intelligence officer of the PNP Calabarzon who is under the command of Police Director James Melad, head of the PNP Calabarzon. He also works with Supt. Glenn Dumlao, head of the Calabarzon Public Safety Battalion, who hatched the operations against the VicSiman group with the code name “Coplan Armado,” which was known to Malacañang through the PAOCC headed by Ochoa.
The CPP alleged that VicSiman’s group was once part of the jueteng operations of the Rosario “Charing” Magbuhos group until he had a falling out with Magbuhos before election year 2010.
“He ultimately gained dominant control of jueteng operations in Southern Luzon through his network of politicians and police and military officials who frequented his Pink Star nightclub and resort in Calamba, Laguna,” the CPP said.
VicSiman was killed together with a police superintendent, two other police officers, two Air Force elements in active service and several relatives and friends. They were reportedly transporting P100 million when ambushed.
The ambush, or what the involved policemen continue to assert as a “legitimate operation” against VicSiman, was carried out by a police-military group led by Marantan, who was supposedly the only one from his side injured in the incident. Swathed in bandages and lying in a hospital bed, Marantan refused to be seen by an independent medico legal.
The CPP said Marantan is the brother of Cenan “Tita” Dinglasan, “who heads an upstart criminal syndicate that operates the government’s Small Town Lottery (STL) outlets in Laguna.” STL operations are widely regarded as a front for jueteng operations.
Marantan is “a notorious police officer with links to jueteng and carnapping operations,” the CPP said. Marantan was in fact reported to have been involved in at least three other similar incidents since 2005 that have resulted in the killing of at least 40 suspected criminal elements.
But despite his record or that of his group, “the decision to undertake a violent, gangland-style takeover of jueteng and criminal operations in Southern Luzon was beyond the determination of such an upstart crime group,” the CPP alleged in a statement. It said such operation could only have been done with the blessing, nay authorization, of top national officials.
Only underlings and kingmakers in the news
Lottery operator Cenan “Tita” Dinglasan might have been exposed as an upstart gambling operator and Police Supt. Hansel Marantan as a notoriously trigger-happy police chief in the mainstream media, but they are “only underlings of the national jueteng and illegal gambling network which regularly centralizes bribe money to key officials of Malacañang and its top military and police officials,” the CPP said.
On top of these underlings, the CPP alleged there are “political kingmakers, serving as election funders of local and national candidates, in exchange for political, police and military protection.”
This is the same network that had been exposed as providing former president Joseph Estrada with payola money, the CPP said. The jueteng payola exposé ignited nationwide outrage and led to Estrada’s ouster in 2001.
That same network fell on Gloria Arroyo’s laps when she took over Malacañang, the CPP said. As proof, the group pointed to Arroyo’s close links to Central Luzon’s jueteng operators Macario “Bong” Pineda and wife Lilia “Baby” Pineda.
The CPP alleged that Dumlao and Melad are both known to be “men of former police chief Panfilo Lacson, now a senator and close political ally of the Aquino regime.” It reminded the public that Melad was one of the police officers involved in the extrajudicial killing of 11 members of the Kuratong Baleleng criminal syndicate in 1995 as well as the subsequent elimination of witnesses.
The CPP accused Dumlao of having been involved in the 2001 abduction and killing of publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito. Dumlao was reportedly reinstated in the PNP last year and appointed to the PNP Calabarzon after he and Lacson surfaced in 2011 in a move allegedly facilitated by Aquino’s men.
Dipping into jueteng money ‘an open secret among political rulers’
Although the January 6 rubout has thrown light on the existence of what the CPP alleges as the “politico-criminal web,” it is not the first time it has been seen. It is “an open secret of the Philippine political ruling elite,” the CPP added, quoting anti-jueteng stalwart Bishop Oscar Cruz who cynically wondered aloud why the campaign against jueteng is not among the priorities of Malacañang under the Aquino regime.
Bishop Cruz has reportedly been warned by no less than Aquino’s uncle, Antonio “Tony Boy” Cojuangco. The latter openly admitted once to having told Bishop Cruz to go slow in his exposés. This reportedly happened after Bishop Cruz identified Aquino’s fellow gun enthusiast and classmate Undersecretary Rico Puno, and former police chief Jesus Verzosa, as Aquino’s bagmen receiving jueteng payola on the national level.
The CPP accused Puno and Versoza of using their police network to link up with jueteng and other criminal syndicates and made arrangements for the centralization of payola money in behalf of the newly installed Malacañang overlord.
CPP accused Aquino of being involved in jueteng, which according to the group, partly explains why he had his key officials facilitate Lacson’s comeback in 2011 after the Dacer-Corbito double murder case against him was dropped by the court. The group said it also explains “why Lacson tried to get Puno off the hook when he was summoned to a Senate hearing investigating the jueteng payola.”
“Even the blind can see how and why jueteng operations continue to thrive and how the political ruling elite pockets hundreds of millions of pesos of payola money,” CPP added.
Revolutionary ‘examples’
The CPP shared that “The revolutionary forces of the Filipino people have long stood firmly against the operations of the jueteng syndicate.”
In fact, the group said that wherever “the people have established their democratic political authority in the guerrilla zones,” they have put to a stop jueteng and other criminal operations. It explained that “Democratic political authorities drive away gambling operators, whether legal or illegal, that fleece the people and take advantage of their socio-economic desperation.”
The revolutionary group shared it has been waging a counter-education campaign to encourage the people to reject and drive away the criminal syndicates behind these operations and instead promote production and engage in revolutionary struggles to fight the oppressive and exploitative system that buries them deep in poverty.
They urged Filipinos to “expose the intricate politico-criminal web that permeates the entire rotten reactionary state–from the local government, police and military units all the way to their big bosses in Camp Aguinaldo, Camp Crame and Malacañang.” The CPP also called on the foot soldiers and rank-and-file policemen, including those used in the Quezon rubout, “to stand up and refuse to be further used in the operations of the criminal syndicates being run or protected by their generals.”
The CPP urged the public to push their politicians and other people in the know to stand up and expose the “criminal operations” under the Aquino regime. 
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