March 05, 2017
EVIL AND DECEPTION IN LASCANAS’ ‘JOURNAL’(PART 1)
(These are excerpts from the column of veteran editor Rigoberto
Tiglao in manilatimes.net on the deception behind the journal supposedly
written by Arturo Lascanas on the alleged Davao Death Squad and the reported
involvement of then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte in it. The title is mine.
The full column is in manilatimes.net)
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) asked
media outlets the other day to publish what it claimed was retired Police
Officer 3 Arturo Lascañas’ “journal” exposing the “bloody exploits of the Davao
Death Squad” and then Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s complicity in the group’s
murders. I find it so sad that the PCIJ—which I helped found in 1989, based on
my research on such institutions in the United States during my fellowship at
Harvard’s Nieman Foundation—has not only drastically deteriorated in terms of
journalistic excellence. It’s become plain dumb or gullible, that it has become
putty in the hands of the machiavellian Sen. Antonio Trillanes III, who I think
cooked up this rubbish black propaganda.
It is neither an investigative piece that is the result of
painstaking research, but merely the dissemination of a fake document from a
single, biased source. Nor is it even journalism as we know it, as it didn’t
even subject the “journal” to some textual analysis or even interview Lascañas
to test him if he really wrote it, as journalists simply doing their job would.
For the sake of the country and our profession, the PCIJ should
now stop degrading the term “investigative journalism”. It is so scandalous
that a once prestigious institution that helped develop journalistic excellence
in this country doesn’t seem to realize that because of its journalistic
sloppiness, it has spread canards against the President of the Republic. Maybe
Duterte indeed is a mass murderer. But unlike politicians like Trillanes who
cavalierly spread lies to advance their agenda, journalists have to prove
accusations with facts through real investigative journalism, not by disseminating
a fake document from a very dubious source. What PCIJ has submitted for
newspapers to publish is nothing but the worst kind of fake news.
The PCIJ says only three pages were shown to it out of 70 pages.
Why would Lascañas do that? So that it won’t be just a one-day story. Because
by releasing the fake document on an installment basis, Trillanes or Leila de
Lima hope that, in Hitlerian fashion, the repetition of the lie for many days
would make it seem true.
Or perhaps the hoax’s brains is really De Lima, considering that
one PCIJ board member is Jose Manuel Diokno—yes, one of her lawyers whose legal
services for her aren’t certainly pro bono. Of all people, it is journalists,
especially veteran editors like PCIJ executive director Malou Mangahas, who
could in just one swift reading conclude that Lascañas’ handwritten “journal”
was fake, that it was as impossible for him to write it as it is miraculous for
a newbie Filipino reporter on his first day of coverage to file a scoop,
written in flawless prose that absolutely no editing is required.
Mangahas is not unfamiliar with textual analysis to determine the
author of a written work. She and her colleagues at the PCIJ helped detonate in
1993 the bombshell that a Supreme Court justice wasn’t really the author of his
decision defending the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) that was
adopted by the entire tribunal, but the company’s lawyer.
Lascañas’ rank is Police Officer 3, or in the military, a master sergeant His work experience other than being a policeman was almost entirely as a bodyguard, and by his admission a contract killer. In the Senate hearings last year (in which he backed President Duterte), the senators interrogated him not in English but in Filipino. I bet a year’s salary that he got his degree from some very bad, diploma-mill school in Mindanao. I bet two-years’ salary he has not taken a course in European history, nor even that he has read a novel in the English language.
Then how the hell could he have authored not only in error-free
English, but using terms (which I italicize below) which aren’t even in the
regular, working vocabulary of most Ateneo, UP and La Salle college graduates
as well as many journalists today: “Mayor RRD’s entry into the Presidential derby 2016 could be a Divine Trap. It could lead him to his political Waterloo,” Lascañas supposedly wrote in
this “journal”. “Presidential derby” has been very rarely used in the
Philippines, I have never used it even if I’ve written so many columns and
articles in my career on presidential races. It was the past generation of
editors— i.e., of the pre-martial law period—who were fond of mimicking the
older American newspapers’ frequent use of it, because the US Kentucky Derby – the Formula
One of horse races – was a vivid metaphor for presidential candidates racing to
the finish line.
Tell me, dear reader, have you ever read an article or column in
local newspapers using the term “Waterloo”? The term is a favorite in Europe
because Napoleon’s defeat in the Battle of Waterloo was such a decisive event
in European history. It’s seldom used in America and certainly not in Asia as
we don’t really appreciate how towering a figure Napoleon was. But Lascañas
uses the term, as if he were very familiar with it. The big giveaway in just
that one sentence in that “journal” is the phrase “Divine Trap”, which I bet
not one of my readers has ever heard of. It is from a not-too-successful novel
titled Divina Insidia – The Divine Trap, published in 2014.
It generated some interest for a while in Europe as it was written
by a Belgian banker Pascal Roussel at the European Investment Bank in
Luxemburg. It expounds a conspiracy theory that 12 oligarchic families control
all the banks, including central banks in the world. .
There are several other words the fake journal uses that gives it away as being written by somebody else other than a sergeant-turned-contract-killer from the boondocks. The “journal” reads (my itals) “Mr. Moreno [of whom he was a bodyguard]was the owner of Liberty Telecommunications Co. he was the business partner of Gen. Fabian Ver, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines during the Marcos regime.” Why would a sergeant prefer the harder-to-write-and-pronounce word “Telecommunications”, when Moreno’s company was really Liberty Communications? “Telecommunications” is a modern term usually used only by the intelligentsia – and lawyers.
Only two types of Filipinos ever use the term “Marcos regime”:
academics and those who were in the anti-Marcos movement, especially
communists. For the latter, “regime” has the connotation of being dictatorial,
and indeed, the Communist Party had popularized the term “US-Marcos regime”,
rather than ”US-Marcos Administration”, which doesn’t sound as nefarious.
Ordinary people like Lascañas instead would use the terms
“government” (gubyerno) or administration (adminstrasyon).
Why is “Marcos regime” used in that ‘journal’? I suspect it was written
by one of the FLAG lawyers, who were all anti-Marcos activistsDo you really
think a police sergeant could ever write such soaring prose and according to
Lascañas, in his mere “journal”? Could he have used the rather precise and vivid
terms, hardly used even by columnists like “bloodletting,” “temper”, “disturbed
person”, “dominion”? Whoever wrote it obviously got carried away as a fiction
writer would, forgetting that his knowledge of the English language—probably
because he was a lawyer, and a reader—would be lightyears away from that of a
police sergeant in Mindanao
They’re taking us for fools.Iit is even written totally
impeccably, with not one word changed or crossed out, as any diary writer or
even any writer of any kind of work would know is impossible to do. Only one
word was misspelled, “brodcaster”. Rather than written by Lascañas in 2015, it
was obviously just recently written, copied by the perjurer from some work
given him. What for? Because everyone
assumes that “sworn affidavits” are usually written and edited by a lawyer, who
merely asks the affidavit-writer to sign. Because Lascañas gave an entirely
different affidavit and testimony last year, nobody really believes his new
affidavit.
On the other hand, handwritten papers give the impression that
these were written with all honesty, as a diary would be – or a last will and
testament would be. If I were Lascañas, I would be very worried though. One of
these days, in his usual arrogance, Trillanes would make a speech in the
Senate, and claim that the “journal” was really Lascañas’ last testament, and
therefore should be taken as gospel truth.
For all the trouble of writing such a fake journal, and making it
extremely worthwhile for Lascañas to make a 180-degree turn in his testimony,
I’m convinced that there is a well-financed plot to topple Duterte. (I
will add my personal observations in a second blog this afternoon). 30
As for my personal observation based on your critism of what lascanas did was very true. He was really manipulated by and paid off so he can sing the song they liked but fir thier mistake, they are literally wrong for posting on it coz you know why? There are many proof reader who is pro duterte and they are very much aware of what was going on. Goodluck na lang sa kanila they will not stand against a good president who is honest to the filipinos and who is willing to serve and protect the filipinos
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