THE arrest of dismissed town mayor Alice Guo and the surrender of influential televangelist Apollo Quiboloy within five days of each other this month have resurrected a disgustingly long-drawn-out question: Where are the others?
Last month, Guo, alias Guo Hua Ping, was reported to have fled the Philippines on July 17 onboard furtive boat rides for Malaysia, then traveled to Singapore, and finally to Indonesia, where she was arrested on Sept. 3 during a pre-midnight raid in Tangerang City, and deported back to the Philippines on Sept. 5.
The 34-year-old former mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, who was serving her first term of three years as a local elective official, is now at the detention center of the Philippine National Police reserved for senators and other high-level persons deprived of liberty.
Five days later, the self-styled “appointed son of God” and founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, Apollo Quiboloy, wanted by both the US FBI and local law enforcement officials, surrendered Sunday to the police and the military following a two-week standoff at his sprawling 30-hectare compound in Davao.
Like Guo, Quiboloy and his five women co-accused are locked up at Camp Crame.
A buoyant President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who, like many Filipinos, monitored the Guo and Quiboloy sagas from his riverside official residence in Malacanang, said the arrest and surrender of the two high-profile subjects demonstrated to the world “that our judicial system is active, vibrant, and is working well.”
His chaser was there would be no special treatment from authorities, stressing the rights of the accused would be respected as the wheels of justice processed the cases.
The developments raised immediately the case of former congressman Arnolfo Teves Jr. of Negros Oriental, found in Timor-Leste, while facing 10 counts of murder, 12 counts of frustrated murder and four counts of attempted murder before the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 51 in relation to the March 4, 2023 shootings in Pamplona, Negros Oriental.
The other case is that of former Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag, who remains at large despite an outstanding warrant for his arrest over the alleged murder of broadcaster Percy Lapid.
Bantag is also charged, along with his former deputy Ricardo Zulueta and ex-BuCor official Victor Erick Pascua, and PDL (person deprived of liberty) Rolando Villaver, Mark Angelo Lampera, Charlie Dacuyan, and Wendell Sualog, by the NBI for the death of another New Bilibid Prison inmate, Hegel Samson.
As in the fairy story-like narratives of Guo and Quiboloy, Filipinos are raptly monitoring the Teves and Bantag chapters.
