Thursday, November 09, 2006 Editorials: City Council on vigilante slays
THE discussion on vigilante-style killings during an executive session of the Cebu City Council attended by officials of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) came rather late, but it’s a welcome development nevertheless.
All hands are needed to stop the killings and surely, what the Council has are big hands, considering it is partly supervising the operation of the CCPO, which has long been criticized for its failure to act adequately on the problem.
Besides, the Council contradicting the stand of Mayor Tomas Osmeña, especially on the unsolved killing of suspected criminals, is always good news.
What the Council does
But what should be interesting to a section of the public opposed to summary executions, however, is what Vice Mayor Michael Rama and some councilors will do that will be different from what has already been done by some concerned sectors.
Criticism by the archdiocese of Cebu, the chapter of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines in the city and some media entities has not deterred those behind the killings.
So it’s a no-brainer that merely criticizing won’t work for the Council, too.
Tolentino’s case
The most significant move was the one actually done by lawyer Alex Tolentino, but his mishandling of the “raw information” that he got on the operation of the vigilantes forced him to back off and defer to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7.
Unfortunately for Tolentino, NBI 7 has never shown interest in getting to the bottom of the killings, so that the information he turned over to that unit may yet go the way of what a Cebuano saying describes: mahug sa linaw dayon katunaw. So the ball is now in the Council’s hands.
Mayor’s inspiration
For starters, Rama and concerned councilors can find ways to push CCPO officials to go beyond the convenient line they use in answering questions on their failure to solve the killings: that their investigation has not moved because of the lack of witnesses.
But admittedly, the Council pushing CCPO officials to act on the vigilante killings will be difficult considering that they still have Osmeña to “inspire” them.
That should be a dampener although it shouldn’t get anything away from the point that pressure on the police from some members of the Council is a big help in the effort to end the killings that has bedeviled the city for almost two years now.
