JUNE 24, 1998. Twenty-six years ago, I wrote in pain. In grief. In rage.
The man I dearly loved as a second father was killed. Executed in gangland fashion. In a most dastardly act.
Ricardo Velasquez Serrano, regional executive director of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources in Central Luzon was shot through the heart while his car was caught in an early morning traffic jam along Congressional Avenue in Quezon City.
Kapitan Gigil to us close to him, Serrano as director of the then Department of Public Information initiated the professionalization and strengthening of the ranks of media persons, siring – along with me as co-proponent – the Central Luzon Media Association in 1978, being godfather to the Pampanga Press Club and the Angeles City Press and Radio Club, and esteemed adviser to all other provincial press groups in the region.
With the media, KG embarked on an “anti” campaign against the perceived scourges of Central Luzon, notching one accomplishment after another.
Like blasting more than 300 illegal fishpond dikes in 1978-1979, preceding by 20 years the Oplan Bilis Daloy of the Philippine National Police that also cleared the region’s rivers by blasting dikes.
Like the operations against jueteng in Pampanga in partnership with the then Presidential Task Force Against Illegal Gambling that resulted in the total overhaul of the whole police hierarchy in the region sometime in 1979.
Like closing down polluting firms – Pasudeco in Pampanga, United Pulp and Paper in Bulacan, and the Bataan Pulp and Paper Mills.
Like campaigning vigorously against illegal logging in Nueva Ecija and Zambales, naming names that were sacred in those days: Marcos and Romualdez.
For that last one, he was banished to Southern Philippines.
In 1995, he returned to Central Luzon this time as DENR director.
And it was rather uncanny that he was again fighting the same demons he fought before his unceremonious exile from the region.
Serrano was in the thick of a relentless campaign against illegal logging in Nueva Ecija as well as pollution in Pampanga and Bulacan caused by tanneries and alcohol plants when he was killed.
Shortly before his ambush, Serrano had worked for the closure of the Central Luzon Fermentation and Industrial Corp. in Apalit, Pampanga which had been blamed for the pollution of rivers in Pampanga and Bulacan.
At the time of the serving of the closure order, Philippine Star’s Ding Cervantes was hit by pellets when a security guard’s shotgun “accidentally went off.” The alcohol plant was finally shut down a year after Serrano’s killing.
I spoke in pain. In grief. In rage. At a memorial service of Pampanga newsmen for Serrano in 2000. “It is hard to accept that the government to which Serrano dedicated his outstanding career as government executive could just sweep his murder into the dustbin.”
The Voice publisher-editor Ody Fabian, now also dead, talked then of how Serrano “impacted in us the highest standards of principled journalism, the values of good governance, and love for Mother Earth which we, in turn, should nurture among the next generation not only of journalists but of Kapampangans.”
“That the death of Serrano, a dedicated and committed government servant has remained unsolved to this day is a mockery of our justice system,” so said Fabian then.
Today, I write in pain. In grief. In rage. Twenty-six years after the crime, Serrano’s murder has remained unsolved.
(Updated from Zona Libre column published on June 24, 2008)
