[The Slingshot] Alden Delvo’s birthday

On Apollo Quiboloy’s last birthday April 25 the previous year, political bigwigs made a beeline to attend his star-studded party in Davao city. There was of course his former president Rodrigo Duterte. Also in attendance were the billionaire Manny Villar, and the senators Robin Padilla, Bato dela Rosa, Francis Tolentino, Bong Revilla, Bong Go, Mark Villar – names that are predictable Quiboloy supporters.

Will there be a party this week? What awaits Quiboloy instead is an arresting party. Quiboloy’s arrest is an issue of national interest. A powerfully influential man is wanted by the law for crimes that are no trifles. Senators who have been at the receiving end of his generosity have defended him. The Dutertes have defended him. Even the mayor of Manila has fallen soft on him by allowing his followers to rally (even encamp) for seven days at the Liwasang Bonifacio.

The task to arrest him has fallen on the shoulders of Police General Alden Delvo, the police director of Region 11. Does he have the firmness to capture the fugitive from justice Apollo Quiboloy? Or, as many now suspect, are we seeing another phony stage show to deceive the public? Will it go down as another case of impunity?

Delvo has nothing but himself to blame for the public disbelief. He himself gave us the hint of what appears to be a lackadaisical interest to capture Quiboloy. It was he himself who said that in fact, he had ties to Quiboloy. And apparently that is just the tip of the iceberg.

“Delvo admitted that since he and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ leader share the same birthday, there were times in the past he spent his birthday at KOJC instead of at home.”

Wait, Delvo was once assigned to Davao City? And when he was there, he rubbed elbows with Quiboloy? That is exactly what the public fears.

We checked his bio and there it was – Alden Bacarra Delvo, born April 25, 1968 in Barugo, Leyte. Former Police Chief, San Pedro Police Station, Davao City. He retires this April 25, when Quiboloy will also celebrate his birthday.

Delvo was in the news in 2008 when a desperate man took hostage four employees of a Davao City convenience store. He negotiated with the hostage taker and peacefully resolved the impasse without harming the latter. The hostages were then rescued.

In 2009, Delvo, then a police chief inspector, was one of the 10 awardees of the Country’s Outstanding Police in Service (COPS) given by the Metrobank Foundation, the Rotary Club of New Manila East, and PSBank.

But who would not think that apprehending Quiboloy was not a joke? It has been more than 10 days since Pasig Regional Trial Court Branch 159 had issued an arrest warrant (April 11), more than a month since the warrant of the Regional Trial Court Branch 12 of Davao City (March 14), and more than 10 days since the Senate’s arrest warrant was served at Quiboloy’s KOJC Compound in Davao City (April 10).

Delvo’s police, along with operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation, have said they have scoured the cult leader’s Tamayong Prayer Mountain twice (without a search warrant) and did not find him there. Imagine a place where the arresting team could not enter a prohibited zone because that portion of the 50-hectare Tamayong Prayer Mountain is prohibited to outsiders – it is worse than searching for a needle in a haystack. It also said they have deployed tracker teams to capture his mobile phone signals and said it yielded negative.

Rodrigo Duterte, talkatively gossipy as ever, defies the police version. He said Quiboloy calls him on his phone. No signals intercepted by Delvo’s tracker team? Duterte also revealed he knows where Quiboloy is. “Gusto ‘nyong malaman kung saan talaga si Pastor Quiboloy? Nasa Tamayong lang siya . . . Tumawag ako kanina (April 11). Nag-usap kami. Malaking-malaki ang Tamayong and there are so many houses. Mahirapan talaga.”

The Quiboloy arrest is not a failure of intelligence, but a deliberate failure of intelligence. Contrast that with arbitrary arrests and abductions done by police even without due process.

The issue of Apollo Quiboloy is larger than Delvo’s retiring police career. Quiboloy is closely intertwined with the Dutertes on many fronts. Sara Duterte, for all her silence on Red Chinese instrusions, has declared that Quiboloy is being “unfairly targeted.” When he was president, Rodrigo Duterte admitted various times that Quiboloy was his spiritual adviser. Quiboloy is not just any private individual.

It is only right that the magnifying glass focuses on Delvo. If you had served in the Davao City police, you knew no other master except the Dutertes. That alone is a factor in defining who Delvo is.

We turned to the confessed Davao Death Squad leader Arturo Lascañas. (READ: The Lascañas Affidavit: ‘I killed for Duterte’)

In summary and through numerous public confessions he had now made known to the public, Lascañas had exposed the existence of a Davao Death Squad under the auspices of Rodrigo and Sara Duterte, that personnel of the Davao City police were in the thick of extrajudicial killings in the city during their terms of office, that the DDS maintained three burial grounds for the executed victims in Laud Quarry, in Maa, and in Mandug; that the DDS also maintained a “death boat” that disposed of dead bodies in the Davao Gulf.

More importantly, Lascañas and other witnesses had admitted that they were paid generously for the murders by the Dutertes using the city’s confidential and intelligence funds, as well as from the funds for city hall’s ghost employees.

The critical question – how did Delvo figure in all these? For now, it is Arturo Lascañas who has the goods on Delvo. Lascañas has gone through his testimonies in the pre-trial phase of the Duterte complaint in the International Criminal Court (ICC). He has submitted a 186-page sworn testimony. He has also testified in a pre-trial hearing before the ICC in the presence of an appointed lawyer for Duterte. And third, he submitted to the ICC a voluminous handwritten account of all his years as part of the Davao Death Squad.

This was Lascañas’s last communication to me: “Yes, I know Delvo very well. He was then a new police inspector, a new graduate from the Philippine National Police Academy assigned not in 2009, to my recall in 2007. He was introduced to me personally by Senior Police Officer 2 Dionito Ubales.”

“Palagi niyang sinasabi na distant pamangkin sya ni Duterte on his mother’s side in Leyte.” (He always said that he was a distant nephew of Duterte on his mother’s side in Leyte.)

 “Delvo is a Freemason. Ako ang nag invite sa kanya. Ako ang kanyang tutor sa Freemasonry. Ako ang dahilan bakit na elect siya sa Freemasonry, siya, si PO3 Jim Abragan Tan and Paolo Duterte. Because by that time nag ‘knock’ sila ako ang Worshipful Master at that time sa Davao Lodge 149. Kaya napalusot ko sila so very very easily.”

(I invited him. I was his tutor in Freemasonry. I was the reason he was elected to the Freemasonry, he, along with PO3 Jim Abragan Tan and Paolo Duterte. Because by that time they knocked, I was the Worshipful Master at that time in Davao Lodge 149. That’s why I managed to bring them in very easily.)

If Delvo was that heavily invested with the Dutertes during his Davao City years, would it surprise us now that he has not been able to arrest Quiboloy? Readers, judge for yourselves.

Delvo retires this week. He exactly has about three days to succumb to public opinion and pressure as an officer of the law and as part of the criminal justice system. Will he?

If he retires and leaves the Quiboloy case as another one for the impunity books, he might even be included later in the charges against the Dutertes in the International Criminal Court. – Rappler.com

Antonio J. Montalván II is a social anthropologist who advocates that keeping quiet when things go wrong is the mentality of a slave, not a good citizen.