“HINDI maari na ang mga tao ay basta na lang inaambush at pinapatay when sila ay mga pinaghihinalaang involved sa drugs o sila’y mga wanted criminals. Kailangang paparaanan sa proseso ng batas...”---Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo, in a radio interview, Sunday (Oct, 27, 2019), condemning the killing of Clarin, Misamis Occidental Mayor David Navarro in Cebu City
In these times, when the public official’s statement is not immediately accepted as true, belief is suspended as one tries to find out:
[1] If on this pronouncement, Salvador Panelo was speaking for himself or the President. While his title is presidential spokesman, Panelo, or any of the mouthpieces before him, doesn’t actually speak for the President all the time. The spokesman tends to parrot the official line of the administration unless the President specifically tells him to say a a different thing. “We observe the rule of law, so we condemn the killing” is a safe answer, although if it were the President directly speaking, Duterte would probably mention that Navarro was in his “narco list.”
[2] Or if in this case, Panelo missed or skipped the facts that embarrass the police position, such as Clarin was in police custody (with at least five cops guarding him), on his way to a prosecutor’s inquest on a case of act of lasciviousness and slight physical injury, when he was killed and no cop was injured.
Other executions
That’s why the public can’t be sure if it must cheer. There have been previous similar executions of public officials (in Cebu, at least a mayor, a vice mayor and an ex-mayor), which were also blatant displays of violence and utter defiance of authority, and yet were not condemned.
There is some hope though that the Panelo statement will encourage local government leaders to speak out and condemn publicly the killings of Mayor Navarro and of at least three robbery suspects who were killed while handcuffed or otherwise restrained by their police custodians.
Local government leaders in past incidents chose to be silent even if the executions happened right in the front yard of their LGU, even if they had become serial killings of a sort.
Violence, impunity
One notable exception in a vast land of silence: Then Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña engaged in a verbal skirmish with police officials over a number of questionable killings and other alleged acts of violence. His daring “resistance” though was sullied by the fact that he did it largely for his political turf and lieutenants and raged in the height of the election campaign.
Surely, the local government leaders must worry over the wave of violence extending to other areas of conflict, such as business and politics, with the sense of impunity derailing law enforcement.
But one can sense caution by the LGU leaders. Tomas Osmeña’s noisy stance against the killings, the kind of murders that Panelo condemns, cost Tomas the office that he sought to keep in the last election.
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TANGUB AS EXPORTER OF VIOLENCE. Three of the four persons who were killed while in police custody hailed from Tangub City in Misamis Occidental: two were natives and continued to stay there as their base while the third moved to Tondo, Manila but originated from Tangub. The fourth was from Talisay City.
Three of the four charged with robbery in band by the Mandaue City police were from Tangub too. The fourth was from Naga City, Camarines Sur.
In the Sept. 5, 2011 heist, involving the robbery on a bank teller riding an armored car while the vehicle stopped at Robinson’s Place Fuente in Cebu City, two of the robbery suspects were also from Misamis Occidental.
One can understand the influence of the Kuratong Baleleng gang that made the Misamis area as the haven of gang members.
But if until this day, Tangub and Ozamiz have continued to breed robbers who prey on other cities, as the recent Mandaue mall robbery indicated, this must be asked: Can’t those local governments where the robbers base their operations do anything about it?
Last June 2, 2017, simultaneous police raids in Ozamis City killed nine suspected robbers. Apparently, that had not stopped the “breeding and exporting” of robbers.
Places like Cebu just have to be better prepared for future assaults by the Misamis boys.