A city of zombies?

The series of hearings in both the Senate and the House of Representatives on the extrajudicial killings (EJKs) associated with former president Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte’s deadly war on drugs has also reopened other cans of worms the Duterte political family members have been hiding for quite some time.

Not many of us remember the impeachment case against Duterte by then Magdalo party list Rep. Gary Alejano on March 16, 2017. One of the charges for the impeachment case was the “hiring of ghost employees,” associated with the implementation of the Davao drug matrix and template that I have described earlier in this column.

Under a Rodrigo Duterte presidency, with many representatives and senators allied with him, this case never prospered. It was buried, along with another impeachment case that former senator Antonio Trillanes IV also filed at the time. This is why both Alejano and Trillanes thought of bringing Duterte’s case to the attention of the International Criminal Court.

Several netizens have posted memes that Davao City is one of the “scariest cities in the world,” with more than 11,000 “ghost employees.”

Testimonies from two key members of the infamous ”Davao or Duterte Death Squad” (DDS) have shown that they, along with thousands of others, whose names were just “inembento lang namin,” (we just invented the names), were ghost employees, according to former DDS squad commander Arturo Lascañas. This was also confirmed through another signed affidavit of former DDS hired assassin Edgar Matobato.

Both the father (Rodrigo) and daughter (VP Sara) practiced the hiring of “ghost employees” during their respective terms as Davao City mayor. The father and daughter duo are said to have practiced this regularly during their terms (2001 to 2010, 2013 to 2016, for the father; and from 2010 to 2013 and 2016 to 2022, for the daughter). Take note that the daughter came in after the end of the father’s first nine-year term limit; and again, became mayor after her father ended his second “comeback” term. While her father became president in 2016, Sara became mayor again in Davao during the same period. (By the way, this is another typical practice of many political dynasties in the country).

At one time, the Commission on Audit (COA) called out this practice as anomalous, as the signatures of those who received the paychecks did not match those in the payrolls, and no explanations were given. I just wondered how this COA ruling was responded to by both father and daughter. But if nothing was done, I could understand it—both father and daughter ruled Davao with an iron hand, threatening those who will spill the beans with death and other forms of “neutralization.” They also were not the exemplars of being miser types of government administrators—they are known to be spendthrift in using government money for the EJKs and of dubious “confidential and intelligence” uses.

Several friends have shared with me a disturbing anecdote about one of these so-called “ghost” employees. A former highly placed military official shared this to them. While on a visit to Davao City, when Rody was mayor, the latter offered the former a night of pleasure in one of Davao City’s glitzy hotels together with a lady ”guest relations officer.” It turned out that this GRO was in the “ghost employees’ payroll,” as a contractual administrative worker, whose work did not relate at all to government administrative work, but of sleazy “entertainment” to be extended to the city’s esteemed visitors.

In the Philippine political landscape, the hiring of zombie employees is not unique, and the Dutertes can claim that other politicians have been doing it as a regular practice of running local government units. If they say this, they are truly saying the truth, with themselves as the “role models” for doing such an anomalous practice. But this is where they stop in telling the truth. They are not transparent in other matters, especially in spending government money for nefarious uses, like in financing EJKs through the “Davao template” as disclosed by former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes general manager Royina Garma, who used to be a police officer during Rody’s term as mayor.

Dishonest politicians give rise to ghost employees, doing ghost projects, and filing “creative writing” reports about ghost projects here and there.

When these types of ghosts appear in communities of the living, and if the living try to obliterate these zombies out of the political landscape, the living might become real ghosts in the future.

But at least these are the ghosts that we need. We need to uncover the secrets of (still living) politicians who are using ghost employees, teachers, projects, and other things to feed their crass, unbridled greed.

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