The sad death of Reblyn Maasin Pitao of Davao City transpired nearly three years ago and yet its consequences are still playing out today. Ms.Pitao, a newly-graduated substitute teacher at Davao City's Saint Peter's College was the third child of Leonicio Pitao and Evangeline Maasin Pitao. Mr.Pitao is much better known by his nom de guerre, "Ka Parago," the name he utilises as the top NPA Commander in the Davao Region.
The Secretary, or Leader, of the SMRC, or Southern Mindanao Regional Committee's Merardo Arce Operational Command, Pitao also personally commands the Operational Command's company sized military element, the 1st Pulang Bagani Command, or 1PBC. From a base on the slopes of the Philippines' tallest mountain, Mount Apo, Pitao oversees all large scale tactical operations in the Davao Region, also known as Region 11, which comprises the following four provinces:
1) Davao del Sur
2) Davao del Norte
3) Davao Oriental
4) Compostela Valley, also known as "ComVal"
This region also holds the nation's second most populous city, Davao City. Because of a marriage of convenience between Pitao and that city's warlord, now-Vice Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte Pitao's personal fiefdom also includes a full 40% of that chartered city, albeit none of its urganised and therefore financially lucrative environs. Although the NEMRC, or Northeastern Mindanao Regional Committee has more manpower, and generates much more revenue for the organisation, Pitao's SMRC is viewed as the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) primary objective in its struggle to neutralise the NPA Insurgency. This is because the region is much, much more populous than the NEMRC's Region 13, also known as Caraga. While Caraga has much more in the way of natural resources, Davao Region is the Mindanao's industrial base. Controlling Davao Region offers the NPA incredible power but more so, leaves it posing a real threat to overall control of Mindanao.
Therefore, it is rather easy to understand the AFP's fixation on Leonicio Pitao. After finally apprehending him in the Autumn of 2009 he was released after little less than a year as a Good Will Gesture of the Arroyo Administration as it sought to lure the NPA back to the bargaining table in the two decades old GPH-NDFP Peace Process ("GPH" being the Government of the Philippines and "NDFP" being the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the political umbrella representing the NPA and its political wing, the CPP, or Communist Party of the Philippines in the Peace Process). To describe the AFP as "frustrated" vis a vis the Davao Region NPA resillience and its iconic figurehead Leonicio Pitao's ability to outsmart and outlast dozens of AFP Chiefs of Staff would be an extreme understatement. Indeed, the AFP created a new division, the 10ID (Infantry Division), and a new Regional Command, EASMINCOM (Eastern Mindanao Command), to more effectively deal with Pitao and his counterpart in the NEMRC, Jorge "Ka Oris" Madlos. Yet nothing has worked.
Not suprisingly more than a few AFP officers vexed with Pitao have undertaken unofficial avenues as they searched for an effective remedy. In 2008, a man on the payroll of Davao del Norte Province, blessed with an almost impossible to get no show job, was gunned down by people he knew on the front steps of Our Lady of Fatima, a Catholic Church in Tagum City's Barangay Mankilam, Purok Villa Cacacho in the aforementioned province of Davao del Norte.
The man, Danilo Santiago, had been a "seaman," Filipino speak for the national equivalent of a Merchant Marine. When he first went to see more than decades before, in 1985, he had changed his surname to Santiago, apprehensive that his birth name would keep him from gaining the necessary clearances needed to work in that industry. After all, his real surname, "Pitao" was known to the kind of people that could make those sorts of decisions. Although the brother of Leonicio Pitao he hadn't seen the NPA leader in nearly a decade. When he finally gave up travelling the world aboard ocean going freighters in 1995, to care for the three children abandoned by his estranged wife, he took a job as short order cook in Panabo City's Maria Clara Resturant. It was this job that would prove pivotal in Danilo Santiago's life.
Apparently recognised at his resturant job in 2007 he found himself dumbfounded when he learned that the AFP, or Armed Forces of the Philippines, was sizing him up quietly. His primary concern was that he was being primed for "Salvaging," the Filipino term for Extra-Judicial Execution. In the twelve years since he had stopped working abroad he had met a new woman, Mary Jean Espira, and began a new family. Life was going well for Danilo, until he was fingered. When the whispers of neighbours graduated into SMS (texts) and phone calls on his cellphone he realised that he had to act to save himself and perhaps his family. Travelling to the adjacent municipality of Davao City on May 23rd, 2007, he presented himself at the AFP's Camp Panacan. Within an hour he heard his name called and was ushered down a maze of hallways before finally arriving at a door without the requisite nameplate, the Headquarters of MIG-11, or, the 11th Military Intelligence Group. Interviewed by Captain Ramos (now with the 73IB), he was pointedly asked if he wanted to live to see his young children grow to adulthood. Danilo Santiago left Camp Panacan as a Military Asset, trading on his familial relationship with Leonicio Pitao. In return for assenting, he was issued a military stock 45 caliber pistol, ordered to report on the first Monday of every month, and sit back and wait to be activated by a handler, or controller.
Although Danilo was initially unaware, another of his siblings, his sister Evelyn, had also become a Military Asset when cornered as an NPA guerilla in Front 3, the Alejandro Lanaja Command, also in the SMRC. Like Danilo, she had been given an assumed identity, re-named Iris Belen Berano, and had used her earnings from the AFP to become a broker of hardwood timber. Also like Danilo, her decision would have a far reaching impact. It had been Evelyn Pitao who in the Autumn of 1999 had fed her handlers the all important information that led to Leonicio's capture in Davao City's Barangay Bago Gallera. For that coup, and setting up her husband, Regenaldo "Ka Emong" Alicaba Sr., the Vice Secretary of Front 33, the Armando Dumandan Command, again, in the SMRC. Evelyn had learned through her contacts that Alicaba had left the jungle on December 24th, 2008, with his 27 year old daughter, Rizalyn Alicaba Manguilimotan, Front 33's Medical Secretary, and travelled to an NPA safehouse in Panabo City's Barangay JP Laurel in order to receive needed medical treatment in Davao City.
Fingering Alicaba and his daughter for apprehension earned Evelyn a death sentence from the NPA. Yet, even as news broke about Alicaba's arrest on Janurary 18th, 2009 and the subsequent torture he allegedly suffered she remained in her adopted home town of Santo Tomas, but her time would come...
On May, 2008, a MIG-11 handler, Sergeant Helvin Bitang, arrived and picked up Danilo on his motorcycle, but this was a regular occurrence. Like many Assets Danilo had become friendly with his handler, and the two spent many a night carousing when they weren't actually working. That night Sergeant Bitang needed Danilo to pick up his allotment of free rice from the provincial capital complex in Tagum City. As someone on the provincial payroll Danilo was entitled to a free sack of rice from the Government Reserves as a sort of quasi-official fringe benefit. Being passive he was easily manipulated into regularly giving it to his "friend," Sergeant Bitang. Because Bitang drove a relatively small motorcycle the large sack of rice relegated Danilo to taking alternative transportation home that night, though Bitang at least covered the cost. Danilo was returning home by triksiad, the motorcycle sidecar taxis that poor Filipinos use in place of vehicular taxis. As the triksiad approached Our Lady of Fatima a motorcycle with two men riding tandem pulled abreast of Danilo. Danilo seemed to recognise the rear passenger according to the triksiad driver, because Danilo grinned widely. The man on the rear smiled right back as he raised his arm and squuezed off two shots from his 45 caliber pistol. Danilo literally jumped out of the moving triksiad and made a run for it. As the triksiad driver- against good judgement perhaps- pulled to the curb, he heard Danilo shout to the gunman who by now had dismounted from the motorcycle, "Unsa man ni bay!?" (Why are you doing this buddy?), lending even more creedence to the idea that Danilo knew his attacker. As Danilo reached the church steps his killer dropped him with yet another round and yet Danilo was still alive. Walking slowly up to him the gunman reached down, removed Danilo's holstered 45 pistol and then emptied its clip into Danilo, thereby killing him with his own gun. He then walked slowly over to the idling motorcycle, climbed onto the back, and disappeared into the night.
At the time of Danilo Santiago's killing just about everyone outside a narrow community within the security establishment bought into Leonicio Pitao and the NPA's claim that it had been MIG-11 that had killed Danilo. In the days following Danilo's burial his widow Mary Jean would suddenly recall that on the day he left with Sergeant Bitang, the handler had stood staring at Danilo's young children and had remarked in somber tones that it would have been a shame had Danilo not been able to watch his children grow up. The widow claims that at that moment she hadn't thought much of the remark and had even replied something to the effect that "yes, it is lucky for Danilo that you didn't have him executed before he approached your colleagues at Camp Panacan." Whether or not that exchange ever even took place, or, if it did, that it took place on the same evening of his death, the fact remains that Danilo Santiago was working as a spy, trying to reel in his brother and his brother's high ranking colleagues in the Southern Mindanao Regional Committee. Although Pitao was aware of Danilo's occupation- indeed, Danilo had told him soon after taking it- Danilo may have been perceived to have played a role in recent tactical reversals. You canno serve two masters, one will always grow dangerously dissatisfied. The AFP had no reason to harm Danilo, he was fully compliant to a fault. The one entity that DID have a real motive was the NPA.
Indeed, on May 23rd, 2010, Leonicio Pitao had his sister Evelyn murdered (along with her common law husband Roberto Dadula) in their new hometown of Santo Tomas, in Davao del Norte Province. Although the NPA allowed everyone to point the finger at the AFP the NPA finally came clean and admitted that it had Evelyn killed. The reason? Her role as a Military Asset working against the NPA...just like Danilo Santiago had been.
In between the murder of both Leonicio Pitao's two siblings, an even more disturbing case transpired. Rebelyn Maasin Pitao had been cursed from birth. A girl named "Rebellion" (phonetically) will be challenged no matter what else happens in her life, and yet there was every reason to believe Rebelyn had triumphed over adversity as she approached her 21st birthday.
I will close this entry here and resume in "Part 2."
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