OP-ED | MEDIUM RARE- Chancy – by Jullie Y. Daza
MEDIUM RARE by Jullie Y. Daza
What are the chances of a “middleman” dying of natural causes in prison four hours after he is named by the confessed gunman?
In a country where 433 people have been verified to share a ₱236 million jackpot, that inmate’s death in a secure facility could be a coincidence, no matter how rarely coincidences occur, and certainly many people you know do not believe in coincidences. Accidents, maybe, but coincidences? As we are fond of saying, lightning doesn’t strike twice. (But “lightning does and can strike the same place more than once and often multiple times,” to quote Samuel J. Alibrando, a naturalist and author of the PH-published Nature Is Always Talking.)
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The death of inmate Jose/Jun/Crisanto Villamor hogged the headlines last week, riveting the attention of journalists, lawyers, the President of the Philippines, and those who are familiar with certain types of police investigations as the stuff that qualifies as mystifying, if not other-worldly. To Roy Mabasa, a former Bulletin reporter and younger brother of the slain broadcaster Percy Lapid, the death of Villamor was as much beyond explanation as it was beyond comprehension.
“Untimely” might be a more suitable word, unless surviving Villamor relatives have objections. Twice untimely at that, his death and the subsequent embalming at a funeral home.
In another case, a broadcaster-colleague of Percy was mystified by policemen dropping by his residence to show their concern for his safety. The policemen were not in uniform, their car was not a police vehicle, and the visit was not expected, but how did the cops know where to find him? The broadcaster was assured that the police were not operating from a data base of information on journalists and in fact had to ask his barangay for his address.
Hello? There are 44,000 barangays all over the Philippines! What are anyone’s chances of finding one individual’s barangay location, just like that, with a snap of the fingers or pointing an eenie-meenie-minee-moe?
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And yet, and yet, we must allow the police their resourcefulness. As a former policeman who became mayor of Manila said, say what you want, but when you need a policeman, he’ll be there to help you.
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