Seares: What mayors, the governor could do about spate of killings in Cebu

INTERRUPTED for awhile, since five bodies were found last Oct. 4 in Malubog, Cebu City, the rash of killings in parts of Cebu province related to the campaign against illegal drugs appeared to have resumed.

Sun.Star called Nov. 25 “Sunday, bloody Sunday”: a jail guard riding on a motorcycled headed from Pardo to Labangon, both in Cebu City, was shot dead by two men on a scooter. And in front of a shopping mall in Tabunok, Talisay City, a retired police officer and his companion were gunned down while on a motorcycle. The killers in the two shooting incidents were not identified.

Police dead-end

And might never be, given the record of the local police in this kind of shootings. We have yet to read or hear accounts of arrest and prosecution of suspects, especially in high-profile cases such as the execution of a mayor, lawyer or prosecutor. It seems that when the liquidation is related to drugs, the police routinely reach, ah, a dead-end where the murder becomes a cold case and consigned to the archives.

Not only are the killers not identified and not arrested. The case is not solved, with the motive not established by evidence in a diligent investigation.

Probabilities

Two probabilities: (1) the police lacks skill and experience to identify the culprit or culprits; or (2) the police chooses not to tag the suspect because the killing is state-sponsored although not officially ordered or encouraged.

No. 1 is implausible as police had shown before that it could solve a crime if it wanted to. Though the need for more training and better equipment never ceases, this much is clear: police can overcome deficiencies and manage to do its job. But what if better police inquiry would expose active or rogue cops as culprits?

The second situation is more likely and the public must suspect. But there is no evidence that anyone has shown or dared to show. No paper trail, no testimonial or forensic evidence. No participant in the murders breaking down and confessing. It is not known what evidence that such groups as Human Rights Watch or U.N. Human Rights Commission possess other than the media accounts and what records the government has cared to open.

Silence of everyone

Local government leaders, more particularly the governor and the mayors of cities and towns, know better. Their respective network within each locality has the capacity to know what goes on. The LGU officials, with their personal knowledge and their duty to the community, are expected to express concern and condemnation.

But who among the mayors are doing that?

None. Not even in the LGUs where the killings are rampant and brazen. Among the Metro Cebu mayors – more crucially, those in Cebu City and the cities of Talisay, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu where media reporting of the killings is intensive – only Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña spoke up to the police.

Tomas’s reason

It could be for the wrong reason, as his political rivals point out, not over human rights. He could’ve been worried, they said, that the police targeted a valuable political ally and he was losing control over the “disturbances” in his city, unlike before when he was on top of things, when he even allegedly “encouraged” the vigilante killings of criminal elements (which he routinely has denied). And the mayor’s blow-up was short-lived, scuttled by President Duterte’s repeated public shaming that he might slap him if they’d meet.

Yet Tomas was the only mayor who went beyond expressing concern; he was noisy and intense in condemning the spate of killings. What have Talisay’s Eddie Gullas and, Lapu-Lapu’s Paz Radaza, in whose cities the killings were more frequent and highly visible, said publicly?

Would voters mind?

At least Tomas showed what the mayors – and the governor -- could do but were afraid to do.

What could these public officials tell their constituents when they seek reelection next May?

Wait, on second thought, the voters might not mind and if ever a few would ask about relatives, friends or neighbors who were killed; the local leaders could say, “This is what you, the people, want. Is it not?”

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