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Friday, August 04, 2006
Help police solve vigilante killings, says Gayotin
A day after claiming that vigilantes in Cebu City are “trained and paid,” Cebu archdiocesan media liaison officer Msgr. Achilles Dakay was invited by a top police official to help in the investigation.
Acting Cebu City Police Director Melvin Gayotin made the public invitation in a press conference yesterday morning.
“He (Dakay) should have come to our office and issue a statement. I am inviting him to come to my office. Anybody who knows something must come to my office to help. It’s what we need,” he said.
But Dakay, in a separate interview, said he does not want get involved in the investigation because he does not know about the training and payment of the vigilantes.
He said the information was only relayed to him by his source.
Dakay is not keen on naming his source either, or taking him to the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO.)
Gayotin said the CCPO has enough material evidence in all the killings attributed to vigilantes but they lack witnesses.
Most of the other cases in Cebu City are solved because of the cooperation of the witnesses and the public, he said.
Gayotin hopes the witnesses will eventually come forward to help the police in solving the vigilante-style killings that have claimed at least 167 lives since December 2004.
Gayotin also commented that the vigilantes were not sharpshooters because some victims survived.
“They know how to use a gun but they are not necessarily sharpshooters,” he said.
Feeling alluded to by Dakay, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said he has no resources to train and pay vigilantes.
“I have my own disallowances that I have to pay for,” the mayor said.
Dakay, in an interview last Wednesday, said a source warned him against asking the local police for help in looking into the killings.
“They (vigilantes) don’t live on the moon. At the end of the day, they go home. That they are said to be sharpshooters (means) they are trained,” Dakay was quoted as saying.
Told of the President’s request to put an end to extra-judicial killings, the mayor said vigilante attacks here “are not something I am proud of.”
“But I am not going to be put in a situation where I am to encourage them to come back,” he said.
What should be recognized, the mayor said, is that because the people have lost their trust in the judicial system, there is really no public outcry against vigilantism in Cebu City.
“Except maybe the IBP (Integrated Bar of the Philippines), Dakay, and a few others,” Osmeña said.
That is why what should be focused on is strengthening the criminal justice system, he said.
He earlier proposed that a referendum be held in next year’s elections.
He wants people to vote on whether track records of judges and prosecutors in granting bail or releasing drug suspects should be published.
The IBP-Cebu City Chapter, in particular, “strongly condemned” the proposal, which was “unacceptable for being in gross disregard of the doctrine of separation of powers.”
For the Dakay, the main question remains: why no suspects have been arrested for the summary executions.
He said the concern of the Cebu Archdiocese goes beyond the summary executions in Cebu but also on the all-out war against communist insurgency declared by President Arroyo and echoed by Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.
“We are for the respect of human life,” he earlier said. (JST/RHM/JGA)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 4, 2006 issue)
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