THE line “Naunsa naman ni...” (NNN) is common expression among Cebuanos when they find something out-of-the-ordinary and bitch about it.
A blog (Istorya.net) runs, or used to run, a section titled “Naunsa Naman Ni, Cebu?” and one item in 2013 wailed “Tulis diri, kawat didto” but cited only the mugging of a woman near a mall by rugby boys. Last May 30, newspaper columnist and page editor @insoymada tweeted, “Naunsa naman ning mga restawran, kita na may palotoon?”
The NNN is less of a scolding than a venting of frustration on the state of things, from one serious robbery near a supermarket to the mock protest of being made to cook for one’s food in a restaurant.
The scattering of NNNs in social media sites since Saturday is just that: not a deluge, just some drops of rain. Nobody is counting and surely it has not come near to breaking the internet with complaints on the state of peace and order in Cebu.
Bloody three days
And what has brought the griping, Cebuano style, is the rash of five violent incidents that snuffed the lives of nine people in the past three days: Friday, July 20, a barangay councilor in his car was shot dead while driving on the SRP highway in Cebu City and three detainees were gunned down in a van 300 meters from the jail in Talisay City. Saturday, July 21, a 17-year-old boy was shot dead in Opao, Mandaue City and a 36-year old man who had just attended a birthday party was killed by two shooters in Mambaling, Cebu City. Yesterday, July 22, three “Muslims” attacked by four gunmen in
Poblacion, Lapu-Lapu City.
Similar killings in public were done before in Cebu in recent history, topped by the high-profile rubout of Ronda vice mayor Jonah John Ungab in February near the Cebu City courthouse and the stray-bullet death of a four-year-old boy last July 10 in Ermita.
But the cases were just too many and too close to one another in the first four murders, with the fifth traiiing close the next day. And most of the victims had some link to illegal drugs.
No stats
Still, there are no numbers to back up any claim of a “patay diri, patay didto” rant. The fact is, the local police have not exactly given specific figures on the violence toll in this part of the country.
Available stats are the nationwide figures that say four persons are killed every day by riding-in-tandem murderers. Some 880 people were shot dead and 47 injured during the period from Oct. 11, 2017, when PNP started the count of that style of killing, until last May 21. And Central Visayas was third in the chart (about 20), next to Socsargen and Calabarzon (40 plus each).
It is mostly impression from news reports that prompts people to say the NNN phrase. But the blood flow is real, which we know that Cebu, or the rest of the country, may not have experienced before.
Tandem-rider killers
Most of the weekend killings were staged by motor-riding suspects or what police call MRS: gunman at the back and the driver at the wheel. Speedy for getting in and out, weaving through knots of traffic, and virtual anonymity (by wearing hoods, caps and glasses and changing or disguising plates), the motorcycle, has been the hooded killers’ choice of transport.
But it’s not just the ease in doing the job that must be pushing the figures in the murder charts. There is something else more toxic.
Unwritten policy
The climate of “impunity,” which plainly means being free from punishment or getting away with murder, is much more destructive than MRS.
Killers are not caught because the suspects are (1) allegedly police themselves, or (2) vigilantes allegedly hired or coddled by authorities, or (3) other criminals who exploit the illegal drugs campaign to eliminate their enemies. The police cannot, or choose not to, track down the killers because they are not pressured to solve DUIs (deaths under investigation).
That’s not fair to many honest and hard-working cops but it must be tough for most of them to resist the widespread mood of “going with the tide” and not resisting the allegedly unwritten policy of executing drug suspects.