Bad, Stolen Scripts

You know a confession is fake when it rips off lines from some famous script, like from the Godfather Part II. Of course, as one almost-famous Yellow once said, it doesn’t have to be true— it just has to appear that way.

Of SPO3 Arthur Lascañas, formerly the bete noire of supposed Davao Death Squad whistleblower Edgar Matobato, little more should be said apart from what Senator Richard “Dick” Gordon already has. And this, in brief, is how Gordon reacted to the call for him to reopen his investigation in the Senate, now that Lascañas has done a 180-degree turn and admitted his participation in the mythical hit squad:

“He has already appeared before the Senate and he said the... Squad did not exist. Why should I call the committee again? How would I know if he is telling the truth this time?”

I reviewed Lascañas’ videotaped testimony during the Matobato hearings last year, given before Gordon and Senator Panfilo Lacson, and came away with the impression that he had truly been hurt by the alleged whistleblower’s claims of his involvement in the vigilante group. Then I watched his “public confession” at the Senate this week —which was not given at a real hearing, mind you—to compare the two Sergeant Lascañases.

Like Gordon, I wondered which of the two testimonies was actually true and if it will, at some future date, change again. And I wonder if Lascañas’ new testimony isn’t as fake as Senator Leila de Lima’s sense of outrage when I heard him talk about a four-year-old boy whom he wanted to spare but couldn’t, because the killers had to follow the Godfather script.

If you’re a fan of that classic movie series, you’ll know what I’m talking about. In one scene in Part II, the local mob boss orders the killing of young Vito Corleone after already having killed his father and brother; young Vito’s mother pleads for the boss to spare the boy, which the boss rejects, reasoning that Vito will seek revenge when he grows up.

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