Elly Pamatong
DAVAO CITY—Where is Elly Pamatong?
This was the question many asked of the perennial nuisance candidate on Friday at the start of the filing of the certificate of candidacy (COC) for the elections in May next year.
Only then did his adopted son, Rameses Javier Casten, announce that his father had died of cardiac arrest at his residence in the village of Bitas of Arayat town in Pampanga province on July 24 this year. He was 78.
Although already months late, the news of Pamatong’s death came only on the first day of the filing of COCs, as the media started to watch out for candidates gunning for national and local seats in the 2022 polls.
“It is with profound sorrow and regret that I announce the passing of [lawyer] Elly V. Pamatong, Esquire, last July 24, 2021, due to cardiac arrest,” said Casten in a statement Friday.
“Perhaps, you are asking [about him] because you might be expecting him to run but he is no longer here, anymore,” Casten said.
His wishes
Casten, however, corrected the rumors that Pamatong died of COVID-19.
“[That] speculation that he died of COVID-19, we categorically and vehemently oppose and deny,” he said.
Although declared a perpetual nuisance candidate by the Commission on Elections when he sought the country’s highest post in 2004, 2010 and 2016, Pamatong never stopped trying his hand at politics. He also ran for governor of Pampanga, for Congress and for Senate but still lost.
Casten said Pamatong’s remains were cremated on Aug. 1, according to his wishes, and his ashes kept in the chapel of his group in Bitas, Arayat.
“His family gave specific instructions to mourn his death in silence and privacy, causing our friends in the media to receive minimal information and coverage,” Casten said.
Casten said Pamatong was “one of the active participants in the rich history of the politics in our country” and it was their wish that “we carry on his legacy with courage and resilience, and that his death be conveyed in an orderly manner worthy of his dignity and person.”
Duterte’s dare
Jovito Bulanadi, village chief of Bitas, said they also only recently learned of the death of Pamatong inside his high-walled compound in Purok 1 there.
“I was informed that his ashes are still in the compound,” Bulanadi told the Inquirer by phone on Friday.
The information about his death from some members of the United States Allied Freedom Fighters of the East and Bulwark of Bathala who reside in the compound maintained by Pamatong for over a decade, he said.
Pamatong, whose license to practice law was suspended by the Supreme Court, had always believed he was the country’s president.
Shortly after the nationwide lockdown in April last year, President Duterte even then dared Pamatong to solve the COVID-19 pandemic so that he, Duterte, would step down from the presidency to give way to him.
Colorful past
Pamatong, who took up law at the University of the Philippines, reportedly caught the eye of President Ferdinand Marcos while still a student and eventually served as Marcos’ personal aide in Malacañang, according to Casten.
But his exposé of corruption during the 1973 constitutional convention angered Marcos, prompting Pamatong to flee first to Sabah, Malaysia, and then to Japan and the United States. It was only in 1988, after democracy was restored, that he came home to the Philippines.
In 2015, he “declared” war on communist China, leading a blood compact among his “generals,” as they burned Chinese flags and chanted slogans against the communist country. —WITH A REPORT FROM TONETTE OREJAS