Top Philippine cop in double murder case could win Congress seat

DAVAO CITY – Cezar Mancao II, a former police superintendent who implicated former President Joseph Estrada, a convicted plunderer, in the Dacer-Corbito double murder, may just become the country’s newest lawmaker after the 2010 elections.

Mancao, who is also charged in the same double murder along with some members of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF), fled to the United States eight years ago. Born in Monkayo, Compostela Valley Province, Mancao is a graduate of the prestigious Philippine Military Academy (PMA) before joining the police force after the dissolution of the Philippine Constabulary (PC). Monkayo is where Mount Diwalwal, the country’s biggest gold rush, is found. Only recently, Mancao’s lawyer, Ferdinand Topacio, told local ANC television that the former police officer would possibly runn as an independent congressional candidate in the province’s first district, which comprises the municipalities of Monkayo, Montevista, Maragusan, New Bataan, and Compostela. Under Philippine laws, anybody who has been charged in court is still eligible to run for public office in the absence of a final verdict from the Supreme Court. Mancao’s case is still in its preliminary hearings. Although still without a party, political stalwarts in Compostela Valley have expressed optimism that Gov. Arthur Uy, a close friend since the Estrada days when Mancao was one of the trusted aides of then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief and Sen. Panfilo Lacson, will join forces with Mancao. The Uy family, which includes Tagum City mayor Rey Uy, next to the state-owned National Mining Development Corp., (NMDC), is one of the biggest investors in Mount Diwalwal. Two prominent personalities, both from Monkayo, have already been identified as possible opponents of Mancao in next year’s congressional tussle. Former youth leader, Maricar Zamora-Apsay, a member of the provincial Board and daughter of incumbent fist-district congressman Manuel Zamora, has set her eyes to succeed her father whose term will expire in 2010. Another possible contender is Joselito B. Brillantes, elder brother of incumbent Monkayo mayor Manuel Brillantes Jr. Joselito, whose brother Joel, the predecessor of Manuel in the mayoralty who was killed in a mining-related assassination in Davao City on June 28, 2003, ran for Congress in 2007 against the elder Zamora but fell short. The Brillantes family, along with sister Janet Diel, who represents the town’s villages in the municipal board, has also mining interest in Mount Diwalwal. Part of their mining occupation was sold to the NMDC years ago. Sources privy to this political development, moreover, have expressed confidence that Apsay would eventually yield her congressional ambition to Mancao and stick it out with the provincial board where he is in her first term. The Zamoras, Uys, and Mancaos are close political allies in Compostela Valley. When Mancao’s mother ran for the provincial board in 2001 but lost, the alliance contributed generously to her campaign fund. If the alliance remains united behind Mancao’s candidacy, the former police officer may just find himself as one of those guys in the roll call of ‘honorables.’