CRANE-Caramoan

It is almost six years now since publicist Bubby Dacer was abducted and murdered in November, 2000 along with his driver, Emmanuel Corbito. They were on their way to his office at Manila Hotel from his home in Parañaque when heavily armed men flagged them down in a busy intersection along the route. Investigations showed that they were brought to Cavite where they were killed and their bodies burned.

That ghastly twin murder has shocked Caramoanons like a thunderbolt because Bubby Dacer was the benefactor of countless Caramoanons. He was born in Barangay Guijalo in Caramoan and studied in Caramoan for a while even as his mother and stepfather had moved to barangay Baliguian in neighboring Presentacion town, at that time still part of the municipality of Lagonoy. It was no surprise that his driver, Emmanuel Corbito, was also a Caramoanon from barangay Guijalo.

Bubby Dacer’s murder has so traumatized Caramoanons because throughout his lifetime he had always shown deep affection for Caramoanons. He rose from abject poverty, an illegitimate child left behind by a Spanish father, to the care of his mother who worked as a laundrywoman to be able to send him to school. Bubby Dacer himself worked as janitor at the University of Nueva Caceres in Naga City where he started to carve a name for himself as a student leader who headed the student government.

But once he had earned enough for himself and his family, Bubby Dacer kept helping Caramoanons. He sent many impoverished youths to college, helped hundreds land jobs, gave medical assistance and provided home lots. He was, needless to say, loved and admired so much by Caramoanons many of whom wept when he died and continue to mourn his death to this day.

It is thus understandable that many Caramoanons are becoming impatient with the pace of justice in the Dacer-Corbito murder case.

Authorities had initially fingered PNP officers Michael Ray Aquino and Cesar Mancao as among the suspects. Both hastily left the country when their names were floated and hid in the United States. But perhaps by divine design, they have been entangled in the alleged espionage plot at which US intelligence data were supposedly fed to opposition leaders in the country vent on ousting President Arroyo.

Both erstwhile PNP officers were known to be close to a man with whom Bubby Dacer was at loggerheads. Here in Naga City on October 1999 Bubby Dacer confided to Press Secretary Rod Reyes he was not at peace with that man.

Caramoanons are asking: why are the wheels of justice still stuck when the alleged suspects are now within easy reach of the law? Scores of journalists are being killed in this country but if the murder of Bubby Dacer who was truly a media man of consequence could not be solved, how much more for those involving obscure broadcasters or reporters?

Justice for Bubby Dacer is justice for Caramoanons; justice has now been long delayed and is virtually denied. But Caramoanons will never be at peace until perpetrators of the crime are brought to court and meted the punishment due them. If justice could not be given to Bubby Dacer, their idol, benefactor and protector rolled into one, how much more for an ordinary Caramoanon?