Hardly noticed nuances in the capture of fugitive doomsday preacher Apollo C. Quiboloy have raised some interesting political issues.
Not the least of these issues concerns the police’s battered institutional integrity — an issue strikingly evident during the Sunday negotiations for Quiboloy’s arrest on charges of human trafficking and child abuse.
If you’re still unfamiliar with what transpired during the four-hour talks between Quiboloy’s camp and senior police and military officers, here’s the gist:
• News accounts had it that on Sunday morning, elite police units were determined to assault a building — identified as the ACQ College of Ministries bible school — inside the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KoJC) compound where Quiboloy and his co-accused were reportedly holed out.
• Police, however, postponed their assault until 3 p.m. of Sunday after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. allowed last-ditch negotiations.
• The Chief Executive received feelers early Sunday morning that Quiboloy would surrender without conditions to resolve the weeks-long standoff, requesting only for a military presence during his arrest and that he be quickly whisked away by military plane to Manila.
• But as the talks progressed, exasperated police under Davao Region commander Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III gave a 3:15 p.m. ultimatum for Quiboloy to surrender, otherwise cops would force their way into the one particular building they’d been blocked from entering since the standoff began.
• By 5:30 p.m., the doomsday preacher and his co-accused were collared and by 6:30 p.m. were on their way to Manila aboard a military C-130 plane and subsequent jailing at the police detention center for high-profile fugitives.
There were a myriad of other interesting details before and during Quiboloy’s eventful arrest, but for our present purposes, Quiboloy’s intriguing requests are what have political value.
Notably curious of these was Quiboloy’s request he be apprehended by a military officer.
President Marcos Jr. said last Monday the fugitive preacher requested a military presence ostensibly because “he (Quiboloy) did not trust the police.”
Quiboloy’s other curious request, according to Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos, was to “not see Torre’s face.”
Vilified and demonized Torre not only led the siege on the KoJC compound but firmly held his ground during the manhunt for Quiboloy on the latter’s home turf.
At first glance, there seemed to be nothing significant about these details.
But viewed in a broader picture, those details effectively pointed out the ugly picture of how police integrity had been compromised, particularly in the provinces.
In fact, the five-month long manhunt for Quiboloy saw the wholesale removal of senior police officers and policemen in the Davao region on suspicion they were taking their sweet time to arrest Quiboloy and his five co-accused.
These suspicions stemmed largely from Quiboloy’s reputed entrenched ties with the police and military forces assigned to the Davao region. One news report said Quiboloy was a generous patron to police and military commanders there, showering them “with vehicles, parties, and gifts during his heyday.”
Such a poisonous background, if one looks closely enough, now lent an ironic twist to Quiboloy’s peculiar admission that he “did not trust the police.”
Quiboloy now saying that he could not “trust the police” meant he couldn’t trust the uncorrupted cops bent on exercising their sworn duty as exemplified by General Torre whose face Quiboloy couldn’t stand.
As to where the military stood, it tersely averred: “The Department of National Defense will oppose any motion to have Pastor Quiboloy transferred to AFP custody. AFP facilities are subject to strict operational security protocols, thus, the AFP is not the proper agency to have custody of suspects in criminal cases.”
The military, in short, didn’t want to be used and would not in any way agree to any plan to place Quiboloy in their custody.
At any rate, the obvious lesson here is that this country still has a long way to go in ensuring that both the police and the military preserve their institutional integrity in the face of the corruptive influence of feudal politicians and their hangers-on.