IT MAY be that the best Joseph Estrada and Panfilo Lacson will be able to do, in facing accusations of complicity in the murder of PR man Bubby Dacer, is to invoke the “Becket defense.”
Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and former protégé and ally of King Henry II of England, clashed with his monarch over the prerogatives of the Church. In November 1170 Becket excommunicated the king, who expressed his fury by loudly complaining, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” His barons took this for a royal command and assassinated Becket in his cathedral in December. Within three years Becket had been canonized by the Church; in 1174, Henry II had to make public penance—assuming, in essence, command responsibility for the murder. Not until 1538, under Henry VIII, did England’s kings exact revenge, when Becket’s tomb and shrine were destroyed as part of the campaign to break off with Rome.
But of course Dacer was no saint. However, regardless of whether their victims are saints or publicists, political murders tend to point a finger at the powerful as the principals (or masterminds) no matter how they may wash their hands of complicity. And this is so both in terms of command responsibility and because the political context of an assassination cannot be separated from the crime.
Neither can the political circumstances surrounding the prosecution of such assassinations be ignored. Although a third possibility exists—BW Resources top honcho Dante Tan having both motive and opportunity to order the rubout of Dacer—a recent testimony (affidavit) and the collateral political opportunities it provides have placed primarily Estrada and Lacson facing an investigation for the crime.
Estrada has been a political albatross around the current administration’s neck since the country faced an urban insurrection in his name in May 2001. Lacson has been a committed foe of the present dispensation and has been particularly troublesome since 2005, launching investigation after investigation, keeping the Palace repeatedly on the defensive.
Now the tables are turned.
Estrada may have been pardoned for plunder, but his toying with attempts to unite the political opposition has at least temporarily been upset by the possibility he might be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. He may claim assassination isn’t his style. The public, though, hasn’t totally forgotten the still-unsolved disappearance of Edgardo Bentain, the Grand Boulevard Casino Filipino employee who leaked embarrassing video tapes showing Estrada gleefully gambling. That disappearance served Estrada’s interests. Nor the attempted assassination of Chavit Singson: it triggered a defection that brought down Estrada’s government. That and the murder of Dacer served to highlight the mobster mentality and methods that discredited the Estrada presidency.
The same applies to Lacson, whose presidential plans must now confront renewed allegations of complicity in a gangland-style rubout. Lacson’s denials resonate even more weakly in a society in which certain quarters are impressed with his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement; and in which, perhaps, a larger percentage of its members remain ill-at-ease precisely with that reputation—a reputation cultivated during martial law and spectacularly brought to court in the Kuratong Baleleng case.
The public is now engrossed in the manner in which the case of Dacer’s murder is inching toward a possible resolution. Both sides, however, stand to benefit from a delayed return of either Glenn Dumlao or Cezar Mancao. The looming release of Michael Ray Aquino, however, also raises the possibility of the eventual extradition and testimonies of all three.
All these years of investigations have honed the public’s ability to sift and weigh evidence. Both the prosecution and the defense, in that regard, will be hard put to obfuscate the facts. And the facts, as we’ve seen, are closing in. Where once the Dacer-Corbito double murder seemed to be yet another unsolved case, the day of its closure may come sooner rather than later.
