Expelled knight responds to KOR resolution, decries forgery, intimidation
Author visits the Rizal Monument in Old Luneta.
“The Committee is entitled to their own opinion but not entitled to their own set of facts!” Paraphrasing Edmund Burke, “Evil will only succeed if good men will not do anything about it” and Dr. Jose P. Rizal’s speech to the Master Masons of the La Solidaridad Masonic Lodge in Madrid, “There will be no oppressed if there are no oppressors.
Let’s take a closer look to the Committee’s version of the truth. The Resolution is a compilation of complaints and reports from different reliable sources from KOR’s from Hawaii, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Chicago, Connecticut, and New York. The named signatories are the ones that in one time or another has communicated with me either by phone, email, or in person their concerns and I might add that I did not solicit them. The four who denied their signatures are the same individuals who have shared and confided their concerns. Two of those signatories were in the Philippines and did not receive the Memorandum requesting the verification of signatures and that is what they relayed to person who asked them. In reality, the two are both Past USA Regional Commander, Sir Ray Banta and Sir Roger Alama, and both were actively involved in our discussions regarding the status of the USA Regional routinely expressing their displeasure and disappointments. The 14 who did not respond to the request did not receive the memorandum and in fact in the Committee’s report they made me accountable and my responsibility to find out their email address. It is not my responsibility to find their address and the request by the Supreme Commander that their verification and confirming of their signatures must be done in front of a proper authority and in a proper format is nothing but an attempt to intimidate the concerned knights.
Speaking of notarized statements, it’s quite disconcerting that the Committee admitted as valid and legitimate the rebuttal submitted by Francis Sison because it was notarized. The notarized rebuttal is a fraudulent document, the signature is not Francis Sison’s but was signed by someone else. We submitted two specimens of Francis Sison’s authentic signatures from official documents that he signed. One doesn’t have to be a forensic signature technician to see the stark difference between the two specimens, the notarized signature on the rebuttal statement is a definite forgery.
Two specimen signatures of Francis Sison affixed to official documents do not look alike, says Limon.
If one will peruse the Committees findings in it is very obvious that they use the same language, almost verbatim, with the rebuttal they received from “Francis Sison” and of the 33 allegations against Francis Sison, they cherry-picked what they want to address.
The Committee accused me of having a malicious motive regarding the two (2) million pesos supposed to be donated by Juan Castro to the KOR Rizal Museum Project. Nowhere did the Committee quote or mention any part of our counter rebuttal.
If Castro’s promotion to KGCR was not influenced by his pledge of two (2) million pesos to the KOR then why did one of the Council of Elders confide to me through an email that the pledge donation was considered during their deliberation, then someone is lying. I have a copy of that email and I can produce it. What we questioned was the manner the donation was handled. There’s a posting in Facebook showing Juan Castro and Sir R. Puno with an enlarge check. They stated that they are handing over the two (2) million pesos donation to the KOR. Thereafter, there is an avalanche of FB posting asking and demanding proof if there is real money transferred. It is customary in this country and for that matter in others too that if a purported prize, donation or cash reward is being given to a recipient with an enlarge picture of the check, it is correctly assumed that the money is there.
In Castro’s case, it is a pledge or a promise that the donation will be executed once Castro gets his share from the sale of a family property in the Philippines. That is a pledge and a promise and it’s not worth the paper it is written on. The Committee declared that there is no public that was not misled during the photo ops in the hotel. The audience is the public and as far as they know there was an actual donation and it wasn’t announced as a pledge or promise beforehand.
The Committee also claimed that Castro’s donation was deposited into the KOR’s MetroBank Account in December 2017. I requested that they should at least provide us with a copy of the cancelled check and bank statement showing as proof that the 2 million was deposited. I am still waiting.
© The FilAm 2018
