Editorial - The Worst of Manila's Finest

EDITORIAL - SMART Files

Manila’s Finest. That has been the name tradition had reserved for the Manila Police Force. And among Manila’s finest, one name has stood out. Alfredo Lim, former Manila Western Police District chief, former head of the National Bureau of Investigation(NBI), and now Mayor of the country’s premier city, has been touted as the finest Manila’s Finest has ever produced.

It has mostly been that way. Mayor Alfredo Lim has always had the singular luck of coming out smelling roses in the media. He has consistently been pictured as an uncompromising nemesis of organized crime, graft and corruption, and the myriad evils associated with the bureaucracy and petty traditional politicians. In fact during his first campaign for the mayoralty, Lim’s chosen symbol was a broom to portray his supposed no-nonsense mission to rid city hall of its Augean stables and the city of crime syndicates. This has led a former general who has had the opportunity of observing Lim at work up close to remark rather sarcastically the “Lim is just a media creation.”

This “media creation” is the glowing picture of Lim the public has always been shown. That is the image he painstakingly tries to project. That is the Lim that, sadly, is the exact opposite of what his critics have portrayed him to be – a protector of crime lords, a purveyor of graft and corruption in high places, and a man given to violence with murders or summary executions or “salvaging” liberally strewn across his path. In short, he is the worst of Manila’s Finest!

It is likely the true picture. There are just too much evidence scattered here and there that cannot but convince the objective observer that Lim is indeed the best thing that happened to syndicated crimes in the city. Witness for instance the various syndicates run by his bosom friend and associate Sy Pio lato. Sy Pio lato’s smuggling, prostitution, rice-hoarding and illegal gambling syndicates have flourished over the years certainly not because Lim targeted them for extinction when he was WPD chief, NBI director and Mayor. Mayor Lim may have indeed busted some organized crime outfits but as an earlier Smart File issue has shown, from obtaining indications, Lim’s actions appeared meant to marginalize Sy Pio Lato’s actual and potential rivals. Apparently, this was to ensure that the criminal playing field remained uneven to suit Sy Pio Lato’s needs. Witness, too, the alleged protection Lim used to extend to known drug lords Manuel Velasco and Jose “Pepe” Oyson as well as to his own nephew, Meynard Siojo. For good measure, throw in convicted Calauan mayor and rapist-murderer Antonio Sanchez who was never arrested and charged by Lim while he was still NBI head despite overwhelming evidence collected by the NBI on Sanchez’s jueteng operations.

But it is not the crime syndicates flourishing under Lim’s blessings and protection. There is likewise the miasma and stink of corruption which can be as pervasive and as nauseating as the “sweet heart” garbage contracte bagged by Leonel waste Management Inc., a corporation allegedly controlled by Sy Pio Lato. Truth to tell, Sy Pio Lato seems to be in on almost all of Lim’s questionable activities that he has most deservedly been referred to by city hall insiders as the “Little Mayor”. For apart from the crime syndicates, Sy Pio Lato operates, apart from the garbage contract, Lim’s favored “kumpadre” is reputed to also be involved in a host of anomalies at city hall which may not have yet caught the public eye as they are less obtrusive as the much criticized Leonel garbage collection and disposal contract.

There is for instance, the multi-level parking project in Binondo where parking spaces have been reported to have been sold for as high as 140,000 pesos each. Then we have Divisoria Market building project worth some P 500 million. There is also the reported massive evasion of tax payments on amusement revenues estimated at over half a billion pesos annually for which Mayor Lim is allegedly able to demand a P 2 million weekly take from the 60 or so theater owners and operators in the city. Finally, there were the various pending projects and contracts Lim inherited when he took over as mayor. These projects and contracts were reviewed by no less than Sy Pio Lato with Lim’s blessings and businessmen or companies involved had since been pressured into ceding interests in these projects or contracts just so they would push through.

Yet beyond the crime syndicates and over and above the graft and corruption at city hall, there is still a more sinister side to Lim. This is the obvious streak of ready violence in the man. From the time Lim made his first sensational kill as an obscure station commander in Sta. Ana where he hilled no less than five detainees “trying to escape”, Lim has never looked back. The scalps of his hapless victims or would-be victims have since piled up. The more known include drug lord Jose “Pepe” Oyson, the unarmed farmers in the Mendiola massacre, Colonel Rolando de Guzman and Major France Calanog, Batangas Fiscal Felizardo Lota, Dr. Nemesio Prudente, among others. This patented penchant for constitutional short cuts at the expense of the most basic human rights of persons who have crossed him or have posed real or imagined threats to him, makes of Lim a nightmare the city can do without.
Unfortunately, the spectre that is Lim is something media appears perfectly willing to gloss over. But perhaps there is something about Lim that media cannot afford to ignore or paper over.

- SMART FILE EDITORIAL -