Restitution

The Court of Appeals Thursday stood pat on its earlier decision that affirmed Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales’ order: Fire 10 Navy officers linked to the 1995 murder of the then 24-year-old Ensign Philip Pestaño.
Pestaño—who?

He studied at the Sacred Heart School in Cebu, then enrolled at Ateneo de Manila where he was an honor student. Pestaño joined the Philippine Navy after graduating from the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) in 1993. He was posted as cargomaster for the RPS Bacolod.

Among other things, he refused to load 14,000 board feet of illegal logs, weapons, and shabu. For that, he got threatening phone calls. “Kawawa ang bayan,” Pestaño told anxious parents, who pleaded with him to resign from the Navy, the late Father James Reuter, SJ recalled in his column, “At Three A.M.”

Part of the shipment turned out to be “a gift” from then governor Gerry Matba for Admiral Pio Carranza. “Orders from above” over-ruled Pestaño. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources certified the logs were inspected in Zamboanga—when the boat was already docked in Cavite. The logs vanished but spurious clearances appeared.

Pestaño was shot in his cabin after the ship meandered on an hour-and-a-half trip from Cavite to dock at Roxas Boulevard. Normally, that trip takes 25 minutes. Logbook entries vanished.

“Suicide,” ruled the Navy within 24 hours, sans investigation. Nonsense, objected Pestaño’s PMA classmates, who pointed to the absence of powder burns on the body and also offered testimony.
Archive the Pestaño case as the evidence is “patchy,” ordered then-ombudsman Aniano Desierto. As Marcos military prosecutor, Desierto hounded Senators Benigno Aquino Jr, Jose Diokno and other dictatorship victims. Up to his death, senator Lorenzo Tanada refused to even address Desierto directly.

Ombudsman Desierto will be devoting a considerable amount of his official time protecting his hide, constitutional scholar Joaquin Bernas, SJ predicted then. “His image is shattered…and it is impossible for him to function effectively.”

And that’s where the Pestaño case was boxed into—until the Senate Committees on Justice and National Defense stepped in. Led by the late Senate president and former Supreme Court chief justice Marcelo Fernan, the committee held eight meetings between May 5 to Sept.3. Members inspected Pestaño’s cabin.

Senate Report 800 concluded: “Pestaño… was bludgeoned unconscious and then shot to death somewhere else in the vessel. His body was moved and laid on the bed where it was found.” “Identify the persons who participated” in this attempt to fake suicide… “The clear absence of blood spatters, bone fragments or other human tissues is physical evidence more eloquent than a hundred witnesses…”

Then senator Alfredo Lim did just that in a later privilege speech. He fingered Lt. Carlito Amoroso (PMA class 1994) as close-in security for Admiral Carranza. Amoroso was on board RPS Bacolod as an “unmanifested passsenger.” Lim lashed Ensign Joselito Colico who admitted, before the Senate, that he removed the magazine from the .45 caliber pistol and wiped off fingerprints. Both were among those cashiered by the Court of Appeals.

The ensign’s parents, Felipe and Evelyn gave up on knocking at then Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez’s door. “She has not agreed to see us.” Gutierrez added “sting to injury,” noted then UP College of Law dean and now Inquirer publisher Raul Pangalangan. She dismissed the complaint after Pestaño’s parents signed the impeachment complaint against her. Gutierrez quit when the Lower House impeached her

In 2011, President Benigno Aquino appointed III former Supreme Court justice Conchita Carpio Morales as Omsbudsman. That same year, Carpio- Morales reversed the 2009 decision by Gutierrez shredding murder and administrative misconduct charges against the 10 Navymen.

Pestaño’s parents also sought United Nations (UN) help. In March 2011, the UN Commission on Human Rights wrote: Despite denials by authorities, Pestaño was not a suicide but the victim of homicide. “Violation of Ensign Pestaño’s right to life and to redress of grievance… is directly attributable to the State in party (Republic of the Philippines).”

“No one has been prosecuted for the crime—after (more than a decade ). It had been committed with impunity.” The Philippines should undertake enforceable remedies… and inform UN “within 180 days.”

Within four months of Pestaño’s death, comrades disappeared in mysterious circumstances,” the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva found.

P02 Zosimo Villanueva tipped Pestaño on drugs stashed in 20 sacks of rice aboard the ship. Then Villanueva was “lost at sea” but his three companions survived. Only a bloodied speedboat was found.

PO3 Fidel Tagaytay was BRP Bacolod City’s radio operator. PO2 Fidel Tagaytay agreed to brief the Provost Marshall about people who sneaked aboard. He vanished when summoned to testify. Wife Leonila’s efforts to trace his whereabouts was brushed off by the claim that Tagaytay was “absent without leave.”

Ensign Alvin Farone contacted Marissa, Pestaño’s sister, saying he wanted “to tell what really happened to Philip.” He died before he could do so.

Firing is half of the job. What about the restitution? Zacchaeus told the Master he would repay fourfold what he stole. And what compensation can we, as a people of notoriously short memories, accord to a young officer for standing up to what was right?

Rename the Navy headquarters on Roxas Blvd after Ensign Pestaño—for a start. What is your viewpoint?