The National Press Club elections are traditionally reflective of national politics. There is lobbying, complete with lunches and dinners and drinking sprees. There is padding of the voters’ list. And above all, there is the tendency for certain parties to claim all positions for themselves.
This, Atty. Ferdie Topacio, a new member of the board, realized this recently.
That said, let me continue the narrative about the NPC elections of May 5, 1985 when journalist-detainee Satur Ocampo escaped his police escorts after voting. Satur took the spiral staircase from the third floor to the ground floor, an area of the building which was usually blocked by cases of old softdrinks and beer bottles, but was cleared on that day.
An NPA squad led by Rolly Kintanar was waiting for him in the street next to Pasig River, and then to freedom.
It was calm and peaceful weeks following the great escape. General Fidel V. Ramos, then chief of the Integrated National Police, attended an event near the NPC and inspected the place including the spiral staircase used by Satur in his escape.
Until one day, Police General Alfredo Lim, then chief of the Northern Police District was going home in QC when he heard gunfire near his house. It was rare even for Fred Lim to hear M-14 and M-16 bursts in the city. It turned out that a house near his QC home was a nest of the Sparrows, who had resisted lawmen with a fierce firefight.
Several NPA city operatives escaped and one was killed. Another Rolly — Abadilla, a police colonel — arrived to investigate. Among the items recovered were the photos of the Press Club that I took that April. It was time for me to flee, as Abadilla’s henchmen started to loiter and start their surveillance of the People’s Journal building in Port Area where I worked. They however failed to arrest or question me, perhaps because the newspaper was owned by Ambassador Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez, brother of the First Lady, who stayed for long hours in the building. Why would Abadilla bother Kokoy Romualdez or the PJ editors Gus Villanueva, Vergel Santos and most especially their friend Max Buan on this?
They would rather arrest me as soon as I stepped out of the Journal offices. So like Kokoy, I began to make the office my home for a few nights.
One night, Max Buan gave me his jacket, tucked me inside the People Journal owner-type jeep used by night reporters and photographers in covering the police beat, and I disappeared in the night. Without even Dave Veridiano knowing why.
People who helped me escape, cool off the heat, etc. were my friends and associates—and they were not from the communist movement. I thank Erap’s favorite movie director Augusto “Totoy” Buenaventura, chief of reporters Max Buan, actor-action star Lito Lapid (my leading man in the movies I directed— “Ben Tumbling, A People’s Journal Story” and “Kambal sa Baril”), Atty. Dong Puno (who referred me to another lawyer, Atty. Joker Arroyo), newspaper editor Ben Esquivel, and others. Of course, I must also thank the two other members of our NPA unit involved in Satur’s escape, and our PO’s.
As for Satur Ocampo himself, I do not like him personally, because they led the movement to oust President Joseph Estrada. For this, I snubbed him when I met him at the House of Representatives and in the Manila Bulletin, when he was campaigning with Manny Villar.
(Forfeedback: cagahastiandiego@gmail.com)
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