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Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Editorials: Worrisome killing
BEFORE lawyer Arbet Sta. Ana Yongco was felled by an assassin’s bullet in her office yesterday, nobody actually thought she had been targeted for execution.
Yongco may have aggressively handled the high-profile parricide case against Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association supreme master Ruben Ecleo Jr. and was very active in pushing for various causes, especially women’s rights.
Still, it was easier to imagine a male lawyer possessing the same determination and dedication for causes to be murdered instead.
Admittedly, it is still too early to make conclusions from a day-old incident and where investigators are still groping for details given the seemingly professional manner the killing was carried out.
It would be unfair to, say, Ecleo, whom many immediately consider as the possible mastermind what with the bodies that littered the road towards his arrest and prosecution for the death of his wife Alona Bacolod.
But while it is premature to jump to conclusions, the effect of the incident on the Ecleo case and Yongco’s concerns is not difficult to ascertain.
The Bacolod family, for example, in reaction to the report of Yongco’s death, raised a good point: They will now be hard put to find a lawyer like her.
It’s not that Yongco’s legal ability or aggressiveness in helping prosecute the Ecleo case can’t be found in other lawyers. It’s just that her killing could have the effect of intimidating other practitioners possessing similar or even superior abilities and traits. It would be interesting to find out, too, the effect of her killing to leaders and members of nongovernment organizations that are defending the victimized, like women, from powerful and influential victimizers.
Challenge for the police
The manner lawyer Arbet Sta. Ana Yongco was killed surely poses a challenge for the intelligence–gathering capability of the Cebu City Police Office and other law enforcement units.
This challenge is not only about pinpointing the suspects. As it is, the difficulty of investigators in gathering information on the killing means they could be dealing with wily professional killers.
The more difficult task, though, is to overcome public cynicism about police investigations that, more often than not, failed to go anywhere in the recent past.
(October 12, 2004 issue)
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