THE FATHER of slain ROTC whistleblower Mark Welson Chua on Saturday asked President Macapagal-Arroyo to bar six University of Sto. Tomas students from entering the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio City. Four of the six students were charged with Chua's murder in March.

Welson Chua, the victim's father, was the President's guest in the Baguio telecast of her weekly program "May Gloria ang Bukas Mo."

Chua asked Ms Macapagal "to direct (PMA officials) to expel cadet officers Eduardo Tabrilla, Franco Salvador Suelto and Arnulfo Aparri," whom he tagged as members of a kidnap-for-ransom group that abducted his son Mark.

He also asked the PMA to bar the entry of three other UST students who have been charged with Mark's murder: Paul Joseph Tan, Michael Von Rainard Manangbao, and Patrick Christopher Cruz.

Mark, a UST engineering student, was found dead on March 15 in the Pasig River, days after he implicated in corruption cases the officials of the university's ROTC program.

"They will only become scalawags (who will) plague the institutions that serve and protect us," the elder Chua said in a three-page letter he submitted to Ms Macapagal in Baguio City.

Tabrilla reportedly is the only PMA cadet to be charged with murder, according to Director General Leandro Mendoza, Philippine National Police chief. Tabrilla was charged along with Tan, Manangbao and Cruz. But the elder Chua claimed there was new evidence that would tie all six students to a kidnap-for-ransom group, which operated two years ago.

Chua told the Inquirer that the government would need to consolidate the criminal cases against his son's suspected killers, "to make the charges stick."

"You don't want to ask me what I would tell my son if he was alive," Chua said. "All I am doing now is pursuing his case. I spent time over my son's grave on Thursday, and I discovered that the grave next to his was also that of a UST kidnap victim who was murdered. It was a 1992 case. It was tragic."

Mendoza said he was taking Chua's claims seriously and announced the progress of the investigation during the President's weekly program.

But PMA officials in Baguio City want more time to conduct their own investigation.

Army Capt. Edgard Arevalo, PMA spokesperson, said it would take a military tribunal to expel the cadets if an investigation proved that Tabrilla, Suelto and Aparri were the same suspects in Chua's murder.

"As commander-in-chief, the President will endorse the recommendation to the military bureaucracy, and we will need to make an assessment before we offer our own recommendations to her," Arevalo explained. "That is the procedure."

He said PMA also needs to understand how those conducting the mandatory PMA background check could miss the ongoing criminal investigation supposedly involving the three cadets. With reports from Jovelyn Reyes and Desiree Caluza