Evil
Just as the justice department was tightening the screws on Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, preventing her and her husband from leaving the country on the strength of a hold order, here comes a huge embarrassment. Maria Ramona “Mara” Bautista, a prime suspect along with her brother Ramon “RJ” Joseph in the murder of Ramgen Bautista, quietly slipped out of the country last Friday.
She boarded a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong that night. She was escorted by a man at the departure area of Naia 1 who facilitated her papers. Her head barely hidden by a scarf, she was easily recognized by Immigration authorities. But they could not prevent her from leaving, they said, because they had no “hold-departure” order issued by the justice department or any court.
“We are shocked as everyone else about this report,” says Alde Pagulayan, Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr.’s spokesperson.
Well, they can express all the shock they want, but they will never escape the public’s suspicion that they engineered Mara’s flight. Which is what it is: flight. And which is what flight is: an admission of guilt. It’s not the easiest thing to get past Immigration even if Naia has earned the unenviable reputation of being the worst airport in the world. You know that from news reports like the one about a group of fake nuns who were caught because they were stupid enough to wear high-heeled shoes. And you know that from the way the OFWs quake in their boots before them at the airport. Those guys can be smart, and strict, when they want to.
By Friday last week, the police had built a fairly ironclad case against Mara and her brother. Immigration officials are not always known to be the last to know. What they had was a stark case of someone trying to dodge the law. How hard could it have been to clear things with the people upstairs? How hard could it have been for the people upstairs to drag someone from the prosecutor’s office or a judge from their mahjong game, or whatever it is they do on Friday nights, to get an order to hold the fugitive? These are levels of incompetence that may only be called creative.
If Mara was not yet a fugitive because she hadn’t been charged, then why in hell hadn’t she been charged? What more do you need to be able to do that? You can’t get any more damning piece of evidence than the word of one of the victims, Ramgen’s girlfriend, Janelle Manahan, who witnessed the whole thing. She was shot in the face and left for dead, and it is only by the grace of heaven she lived to tell her tale. She was there bleeding to death when her assailant turned his sights on Ramgen and shot him and then stabbed him again and again to make sure he was dead. She was there lying in a pool of her blood when Mara pleaded with her hired assassin, “Tama na! Tama na!,” aghast at her and her brother’s handiwork.
The argument is its own refutation: If Mara had not yet been charged at that point, why hadn’t she been so? Indeed, why hadn’t the authorities moved with alacrity the way they have with suspects from less prominent families who have less capabilities to fly abroad to cut off that path? That’s yet another crime that begs heaven for redress.
As to the original crime itself, that will go down in the annals of Philippine crime, already awash with blood, as one of the grisliest ever. One is tempted to say that it is not without cruel irony, or twist of fate, or karma, take your pick, that after portraying all those hardened criminals of Cavite in his movies, Ramon Revilla Sr. would live long enough to see some of his children incarnate them right at home in real life. But it’s even more than that, this crime is far more heinous than the ones committed by Revilla’s characters in the movies.
It’s so, first off, because it was done by siblings. Numbed as we are to violence, some things still manage to shock us. This is one of them. To this day, it’s all people can do to grasp the appalling depths of the crime. How can you even contemplate murdering someone you grew up with however alienated you have become, however pissed off at him you have gotten? Bong Revilla’s first reaction was to disbelieve that Ramgen’s siblings committed so mind-boggling a thing. It’s impossible, he said. What’s impossible has now become near-certain, and all the more horrific.
It’s so, second off, because it was done by people in the flush of youth. Mara is 21, and RJ, the apparent mastermind, is 18. That they should think nothing of ending the life of a brother who has known only 23 summers, that is something that happens only in twisted psychological thrillers. The kind where you don’t always succeed in suspending disbelief. Bloodletting by minors, cold-blooded murders by minors are not unknown, nor are they rare in this part of the world. There are gang wars or frat wars aplenty to show for it. But the cold-blooded plotting of the murder of a brother and the blood-spattered carrying out of it by minors is so. It raises the bar, or lowers the depths, to which local criminals can rise, or sink to.
It’s so, third off, because it was done by people for nothing more than money. Or so that is how the story is shaping up. The shallowness of the motive contrasts with the profundity of the atrocity. Of course a million bucks in monthly allowance is something to die for, or kill for, but only so metaphorically. You’ve got to wonder what kind of values these kids grew up with.
You can always blame the culture of impunity for it, for putting murder well within range of the Filipino’s options, well within the Filipino’s horizon. But there is such a thing as personal choice too. There is such a thing as individual predilection too. This one is just a little too warped.
It’s got evil written all over it.
