To help search for justice, not driven by colonial mindset
Mon Tulfo is certainly entitled to his opinion (“Hill not qualified to testify as an expert,” Metro, 7/21/15) on who—Wayne Hill or his preferred doctor—has the better qualifications to testify as an expert witness in Ensign Phillip Pestaño’s killing way back on Sept. 27, 1995, while on board the BRP Bacolod City.
However, may I assure him and his innumerable readers that being a forensic expert has nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
Black, white or brown, if one has the expertise of a forensic witness, then, he or she is. And just because one is not believed as an expert in one or two cases, does not mean that he or she no longer qualifies as an expert.
Incidentally, there are many circumstances in the killing of Ensign Pestaño that show that it was no suicide. And they need not be testified to only by Hill.
God willing, we will show those incidents in court—where they properly belong—for the reason that they are too numerous to mention here and too long to presume that the Inquirer, as prestigious as it is, will ever be so generous to publish the same.
In closing, may I state that my only objective in acting as counsel for the Pestaño family is to help them search for justice. And my life as a lawyer and as a public servant probably adequately rebuts Tulfo’s insinuation that the colonial mentality that hobbles the mindsets of some of our fellow citizens also inhabits the recesses of my mind.
That simply is not true.
—NENE PIMENTEL
