Unlikely Team

The Philippines remains one of a few countries where politics can reconcile “strange bedfellows.” Horacio “Boy” Morales, a hunted member of the underground revolutionary movement in the mid-1970s-1980s, now finds himself campaigning for president Sen. Panfilo Lacson who as a Constabulary officer, may have crossed paths with the ex-agrarian reform secretary.

By Alexander Martin Remollino 
Bulatlat.com

Last Feb. 4, the Partido ng Masang Pilipino (PMP), party of ousted President Joseph Ejercito Estrada,
announced that it was supporting Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson as the presidential candidate of the
united opposition.

Lacson, who is with the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP), had earlier confirmed his intention to run for the presidency in 2004.

The PMP is headed by Horacio “Boy” Morales, who served as agrarian reform secretary under the Estrada
administration. He had been promoted from campaign manager late last December. As party president, he
would be playing a very important part in Lacson’s presidential campaign.

The two make an unlikely team.

Boy Morales

Morales, fresh from college in the University of the Philippines, was recruited by Rafael Salas into government service in 1965 as a senior economist with the Presidential Economic Staff of the then newly-elected President Ferdinand Marcos. Salas was Marcos’s executive secretary and rice czar.

Morales went up the ladder and eventually became executive vice-president of the Development Academy of the Philippines.

He was supposed to receive an award as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines on Dec. 26, 1977. He shocked the nation – and Marcos himself – when he failed to appear at the awarding ceremony sending instead a statement that he is joining the underground revolutionary movement.

For five years he became an active underground organizer and was rumored to have headed the National Democratic Front. In 1982, he was captured by the military somewhere in Metro Manila. He was subjected to heavy physical and mental torture for which his lawyers filed a suit against his captors.

Moralez, along with other political prisoners, was released eventually from prison by Corazon Aquino after People Power I in Feb. 1986. From prison, it was reported that he joined the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) and enmeshed himself in popular democracy, a new politics that eventually isolated himself from his national democratic comrades. But not before he would be drafted by the Partido Ng Bayan – forerunner of today’s Bayan Muna – as a senatorial bet in 1987.

Ping Lacson

Lacson, on the other hand, graduated from the Philippine Military Academy in 1971, together with Gregorio Honasan, who plotted several coups from 1987 to 1989. He immediately joined the dreaded Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group (MISG).

The MISG was reportedly notorious for its practice of torture. Lacson’s hands were not above this, according to a study of the martial law era conducted by Yale University. The study, “Closer than Brothers,” says that Lacson, together with Roberto Ortega (father of the former actress Michelle Ortega) and the late Rolando Abadilla “tortured together” for more than a decade.

In 1983, he was one of the defendants in a case filed by human rights victims against then Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Fabian Ver for torture and other inhumane acts. The defendants were convicted by a lower court but appealed their case.

Lacson headed a task force of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC) during the Ramos administration. The PACC was headed by Vice President Joseph Estrada. In 1995, he was suspended due to allegations that his men were involved in the rubout of 11 criminal suspects allegedly belonging to the Kuratong Baleleng kidnap-for-ransom and bank-robbery group.

In 1998, Estrada as president appointed Lacson as chief of the Philippine National Police and head of
the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF). As head of both the PNP and the PAOCTF, he was accused of tapping telephone lines - a violation of one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights.

His name has also been dragged into the murders of public relations man Buddy Dacer, Young Officers Union spokesperson Baron Cervantes, and Insp. John Campos - one of the officers who served under him in the PAOCTF during the Estrada administration.

Nevertheless, it was during the Estrada presidency where both Morales and Lacson became part of the controversial president’s inner power circle. People Power II in January 2001 found Lacson breaking off his loyalty to Estrada. Morales is reported to have been involved in the mobilization of Estrada loyalists during the May 1, 2001 siege of Malacañang.

Unusual

We are then witness to an unusual team. In the Morales-Lacson team-up, we see a human rights victim campaigning for one who has been accused of numerous human rights violations. Bulatlat.com

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