CEBU City Mayor Tomas Osmeña has cut out an odd figure and sounded strange since he started calling out the police against the rash of killings in the city.
“This is no longer a safe city,” he intoned after a PDEA agent was ambushed near the Capitol and an attempt to kill Tejero barangay councilor and former barangay captain Jessielou Cadungog was foiled, with a cop chasing his car killed instead.
Mayor Osmeña publicly accused the police of being behind the killings, pushing his charge after he received an alleged warning from a “leaker” within the local PNP that he, Tumulak, and Cadungog would be liquidated. When another PDEA agent was ambushed in Carcar City, Tomas made the “expose” that one shooter who was hit during the attack was also a cop. And so on, including the dramatic bit about a crew of killers, including four police officers, being brought to Cebu.
Suspicions, with no hard evidence, just cryptic, heavily redacted text messages. But the police bungled with its versions of the incidents, helping make the Tomas allegations more credible.
Two images
But that’s not the purpose here at this time. Compare two images:
n One of Tomas, encouraging the killings in 2004, offering bounty for the death of crime suspects, even suspected by a number of Cebuanos and the U.S. Embassy of waging the vigilante operations. No proof was found by the police or the embassy panel that visited the city but the picture of Tomas coddling if not conducting the vigilantes’ dark work has not vanished.
n The other of Tomas, present days, protesting against the taking of human lives in the city and battling with the police over who is responsible.
Explanation
The contrast is vivid. Tomas admitted Thursday (Aug. 16) in an interview on dyCM radio he had been asked by his friends about it. Why the change of view, if not of policy: from cheering the killings in his city to complaining that cops were doing it, also in his city.
Listen to his explanation: It’s because they are “now targeting political figures.” In Davao (and in Cebu), those who were gunned down were convicted and suspected criminals. Even President Duterte, Tomas repeatedly mention, didn’t go after his political enemies.
When it’s ‘OK lang’
So it was OK, it would be OK, if the bodies that fell were those of convicted, accused, or suspected of a crime, with the crime unspecified. But not his political allies such as Cadungog or lieutenants such as Councilor and “deputy mayor” Dave Tumulak.
“OK lang” if the victims were people whom society rejects or detests. Or strangers, those whom you didn’t know. But not political friends. Or relatives and loved ones or people he drinks or breaks bread with.
Jason Monteclar. the interviewer who greased the mayor’s way to keep him talking, didn’t ask if Tomas had changed his belief about extrajudicial killings. That would’ve enlightened the city populace if their mayor would not argue anymore with the police, as he has done now, if the targets were the likes of Mike Rama and Edgar Labella or Joel Garganera, Raymond Garcia or Joey Daluz -- or lesser known citizens linked, justly or not, to illegal drugs or some other larceny.