For refusing to explain his claim that two cochairs of the House of Representatives’ quad committee had tried to coerce him to corroborate the alleged reward system for cops and hitmen in then President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, a police officer held in the chamber over the holidays has been ordered transferred to a police station.

The quad committee ordered last Tuesday, Jan. 21, that Police Col. Hector Grijaldo be moved to Quezon City Police Station 6 and detained there for an indefinite period. “You are again cited in contempt,” Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, lead committee chair, told Grijaldo after Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop made the motion due to the colonel’s refusal to “answer relevant questions.” 

Grijaldo has been in House detention since Dec. 14. He was cited in contempt two days earlier for skipping four times the hearings of the quad committee that has been inquiring into the connections among illegal drugs, Philippine offshore gambling operators, and extrajudicial killings during Duterte’s term. 

The special panel particularly wanted to question Grijaldo’s allegation at a Senate blue ribbon subcommittee hearing last October that Sta. Rosa City Rep. Dan Fernandez and Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr. had pressured him to confirm the testimony of retired colonel Royina Garma on the Duterte administration’s alleged reward system for cops and hitmen. 

Garma, a trusted aide of Duterte and former head of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), also testified that the reward money for cops and hitmen ranged from P20,000 to P1 million.

Grijaldo skipped the quad committee’s hearings with the excuse that he was receiving medical treatment for a shoulder injury that later required him to undergo surgery and hospital confinement.

Angered and frustrated

At the 14th hearing of the House panel on Tuesday, committee members led by Deputy Speaker David Suarez were angered and frustrated by Grijaldo’s refusal to answer questions concerning his testimony at the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee’s hearing.  

“I stand by my statement in the Senate under oath and I would like to invoke my right against self-incrimination,” Grijaldo repeatedly told the committee members seeking to clarify his statements against Fernandez and Abante in the affidavit he executed and read before the Senate subcommittee last Oct. 28. 

Suarez told Grijaldo there was nothing incriminating in the questions posed to him because it was he who had executed and signed his affidavit. 

Suarez and Barbers called out Grijaldo several times for being “out of order” when he again refused to answer questions including that of Acop, who had asked him for the legal basis for his invocation of his right against self-incrimination. 

Barbers asked Grijaldo if he wanted the committee to provide him with a lawyer to advise him on his rights. But Grijaldo declined. He declined as well the committee’s offer for him to testify in an executive session. 

“You are hiding behind the right against self-incrimination when you are being asked relevant questions. You are only brave in the Senate because you have an ally. Show us that you are brave here, too,” Barbers told Grijaldo at one point.

Honor and courage

Grijaldo is being investigated for the lapses in the investigation of the 2020 killing of PCSO board secretary and retired general Wesley Barayuga in Mandaluyong City. He was police chief of Mandaluyong at the time of Barayuga’s murder. 

When asked by Suarez what had driven him to execute the affidavit against Fernandez and Abante, Grijaldo said he was disheartened by the way the two committee cochairs were supposedly pressuring him. He said he had told his wife about it and that she did not want him to disclose it to anyone. But when he heard Sunday Mass, he said, he was moved by the gospel about honor and courage to speak up against the two lawmakers.

Suarez told Grijaldo that he had made serious accusations that “tarnish the reputation of the committee.”

Barbers also said as much, and challenged Grijaldo to show “the same candor and courage” he did during the Senate hearing. 

Suarez told Grijaldo: “If you want to talk about honor, talk about the integrity of a person. Telling the truth is the simplest way to show honor and that you are not hiding and lying.” 

Both Fernandez and Abante—who inhibited from sitting as cochairs during the hearing and took their oath as resource persons in discussing the Grijaldo case—denied anew his accusation. They said they had sought a meeting with Grijaldo after being told by Garma and her lawyers that he would be able to corroborate her testimony on the supposed reward system in the war on drugs.

“I asked him if he could corroborate the testimony of Garma and he said he could not…I felt that he would not confirm [Garma’s testimony] and did not pursue it anymore,” Fernandez told the committee.

Abante said he had asked Grijaldo the same thing because Garma had told him in confidence that Grijaldo “knows a lot.”

“[Garma] said she was very close to Grijaldo and he would side with her, but all of a sudden, he is not her ally,” Abante said.

Fernandez said Garma’s two lawyers also attended the meeting with Grijaldo.

To bolster their denial of coercing Grijaldo, Fernandez showed CCTV footage of himself, Abante and Grijaldo entering the holding area in the House for the 10–15-minute-long meeting last Oct. 22.

At 7:17 p.m., Grijaldo entered the room followed shortly by Fernandez and Abante. At 7:35 p.m., Fernandez and Abante exited the room, followed a second later by a smiling Grijaldo, along with Garma’s two lawyers.

“There is nothing in his facial expression that shows that he was harassed,” Fernandez said of Grijaldo, who, the lawmaker noted, was even conversing with a Philippine National Police Academy “mistah” (co-alumnus) as he left the area.

Acop also said Garma’s two lawyers had issued a joint statement denying that any coercion had taken place that night.

“So it’s the word alone of Grijaldo against the word of two cochairs and attested by the two lawyers of one of our resource persons, Garma,” Acop said.

Abang Lingkod Party-list Rep Joseph Stephen Paduano quoted the two lawyers as saying in their statement: “Throughout the meeting, we affirm we did not witness any form of coercion or undue influence directed toward Mr. Grijaldo. The discussions taking place were cordial and respectful.”

‘Playing victim’ 

Barbers, meanwhile, chided Grijaldo for his supposed “penchant for playing victim.”

“But the truth is, the video doesn’t tell a lie. If you have conviction, then you will not have that demeanor,” Barbers said. He asked the committee to show video footage of Grijaldo’s testimony at the Senate, “so we have a point of comparison.”

The video “shows a police officer looking like a debonair in his uniform, with his rank, lying through his teeth, and he delivered his statement with full braggadocio,” Barbers said.

“But today,” he added, addressing Grijaldo, “you seem to have lost steam and you keep on invoking your right against self-incrimination, which is a manifestation of hiding from the truth.”