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[av_heading heading=’Another LascaƱas hoax…’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY LUIS BUENAFLOR JR.
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Monday, March 6, 2017
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HAVE you read the so-called journal of self-proclaimed “hit man” and supposedly member of the “Davao Death Squad” or DDS, retired Police Officer 3 Arthur Lascañas?
If not, then I’m quite sure you have heard about it as the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism or PCIJ has been peddling the “journal exposé story” to mainstream media i.e. ABS-CBN and GMA Television, Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star newspapers. The results, of course, are screaming headlines in mainstream media about this journal.
I have read the “Lascañas Journal” and this, I say, “Good God, this man can write!”
The journal is written in impeccable English. Why, retired Police Officer 3 Arthur Lascañas is a better writer than most reporters in Panay News and the Daily Guardian. The 70 pages journal is handwritten and, as newspaper editors would say, “There’s no need to edit it.”
This I dare say at face value retired Police Officer 3 Arthur Lascañas is a much better writer compared to seasoned journalists Alex Vidal and Wenceslao Mateo, and I say it without malice.
And here comes the sticky part: the rank of Arthur Lascañas is PO3 or Police Officer 3, in the military that would be equivalent to Master Sergeant – meaning he is an enlisted man and not an officer so he does not have the benefit of being an alumnus of the Philippine Military Academy or the Philippine National Police Academy.
I sincerely doubt if he is even a college graduate; maybe he had two years college if he is, indeed, a college graduate. I’m pretty sure it is not from the Ateneo de Manila, De La Salle University or the University of the Philippines. I bet my “black balls” it’s from some obscure school in Mindanao. And most probably his reading list, if any, does not include European history and economics.
Why I say these things? People, we have graduates of Mass Communications from the West Visayas State University who cannot even write a simple sentence in proper English. And again, I say this without malice, I’m just stating a fact.
Never mind that I am a journalist and an editor for decades; let’s just put it this way, I have been teaching journalism and English writing in proper and prestigious schools. Nothing surprises me anymore.
Retired Police Officer 3 Arthur Lascañas started his professional life as a policeman and retired as one. Along the way he claimed to have been a professional “hit man.” Nowhere is there in his resume where he was a writer or even a member of his school or the PNP’s publications. Being a policeman and a so-called hit man does not make one a writer and one who even writes in impeccable English.
Here are some excerpts from what Manila Times columnist Bobi Tiglao has to say on the “Lascañas Journal”:
“Then how the hell could he have authored not only in error-free English, but using terms (which I italicize below) which aren’t even in the regular, working vocabulary of most Ateneo, UP and La Salle college graduates as well as many journalists today:
“Mayor RRD’s entry into the Presidential derby 2016 could be a Divine Trap. It could lead him to his political Waterloo,” Lascañas supposedly wrote in this “journal”.
“Presidential derby” has been very rarely used in the Philippines; I have never used it even if I’ve written so many columns and articles in my career on presidential races. It was the past generation of editors — i.e., of the pre-martial law period — who were fond of mimicking the older American newspapers’ frequent use of it, because the US Kentucky Derby – the Formula One of horse races – was a vivid metaphor for presidential candidates racing to the finish line.
Tell me, dear reader, have you ever read an article or column in local newspapers using the term “Waterloo”? The term is a favorite in Europe because Napoleon’s defeat in the Battle of Waterloo was such a decisive event in European history. It’s seldom used in America and certainly not in Asia as we don’t really appreciate how towering a figure Napoleon was.
But Lascañas uses the term, as if he were very familiar with it.
The big giveaway in just that one sentence in that “journal” is the phrase “Divine Trap”, which I bet not one of my readers has ever heard of. It is from a not-too-successful novel titled Divina Insidia – The Divine Trap, published in 2014.”
The “Lascañas Journal” is a hoax on the same level as the so-called Duterte bank records produced by the ultimate fake senator Antonio Trillanes./PN
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