No Perfect Crime - 1

Good morning everybody. All people should have to pay attention of this news which I have read in our newspaper.

The Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, the anti-crime watchdog, said the arrest of two former officers of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in the United States in connection with the 2000 murders of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer should show there’s no perfect crime. The remark is anticlimactic but it reflects the public’s relief upon learning that after eight years, the murders are on their way to a resolution. The cases are by no means closed, but the arrests should expedite the investigation and trial.

When his family reported Dacer’s disappearance in November 2000, many people immediately wrote him off as a goner. In those confusing days when the administration of President Joseph Estrada was collapsing, Dacer’s disappearance seemed merely to reinforce the general feeling that things were coming unhinged. It didn’t matter that Dacer belonged to a public relations industry where loyalties can be bought, where some PR professionals are bereft of ethics, and where treachery and betrayal may take place behind warm handshakes and profuse pleasantries. Dacer thrived and basked in a regime of false smiles and spurious allegiances, and his brutal death embodied the innately brutal nature of public relations, or at least public relations as practiced in the Philippines.

Sabina Reyes, Dacer’s daughter, testified in court that she had been told by her father that if something happened to him, it would be the handiwork of Panfilo Lacson, who was at the time head of the Presidential Anti-Organized-Crime Task Force (PAOCTF). She claimed Lacson was angry at Dacer for supporting Roberto Lastimoso’s bid for the position of PNP chief. She disclosed the contents of her father’s letter to Estrada in which Dacer endorsed Lastimoso for the top post and accused Lacson of waging a media campaign against Lastimoso and Ronaldo Puno, who was then the interior secretary. (Lacson has denied all of this.) How a publicist could affect public policy and top appointments in government indicates Dacer’s power, which certainly went beyond the strict limits of his profession.