KALIBO, Aklan (Updated 1:41 p.m.) -- Local police formed Tuesday a special investigating group that will probe the killing of Councilor Fernando Baldomero, who is a former rebel returnee and a left-wing activist.
Radio reports said Aklan Police Regional Director Samuel Pagdilao ordered the task force, which will be led by Aklan Provincial Director Epifanio Bragais Jr., to solve the case.
The group will be composed of personnel from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, crime laboratory, and Regional Investigation and Detection Management Division of the Police Regional Office in Western Visayas.
Pagdilao said the task force will conduct thorough investigation on the killing of Baldomero, who was shot dead in front of his house around 6 a.m. Monday as he was about to take his 12-year-old child to school.
He died on the way to the hospital, suffering from wounds to his head and neck, said Epifanio Bragais.
Baldomero was the chairman of Bayan Muna political party and a member of his village council in Aklan. Police quoted witnesses as saying the gunmen sped away on a motorcycle without license plates.
Bayan Muna president Satur Ocampo and party-list lawmaker Teddy Casiño condemned the assassination, saying the victim is the 145th member of the political party to fall under extrajudicial killings in the country.
"We demand an immediate and thorough investigation on the possible involvement of military and military-backed death squads in this continuing climate of impunity against government critics," said Casiño.
Amnesty International also urged new Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, the former head of the independent Commission on Human Rights, to end impunity for the rampant killings and enforced disappearances and to improve protection for witnesses.
"In the Philippines, members of the military, police, state-supported militias and 'private armies,' as well as insurgent groups, have literally been allowed to get away with murder," said Sam Zarifi, Asia-Pacific director of the human rights watchdog.
In a statement, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) called on President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III to use the full force of the law to arrest the perpetrators.
"Heads must roll in the AFP, or Armed Forces of the Philippines, otherwise the climate of impunity will continue," said Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes Jr., accusing the government forces of perpetrating the attack.
Bayan said Baldomero had said that his house was under "surveillance" since 2008 and that he had survived several attempts on his life, including an incident last March 19 when suspects lobbed a grenade in his residence.
Baldomero was a political detainee in the 1980s, when he was accused of being a high-ranking official of the New People's Army (NPA).
In 2005 and 2006, he was arrested for offenses attributed to the NPA, but all cases filed against him were dismissed.
Casiño and Ocampo called on Aquino to immediately scrap the government's counterinsurgency program called "Oplan Bantay Laya III" and its policy of classifying "leftist activists" as "enemies of the state."
Aquino, who succeeded Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has promised to jail perpetrators and seek justice for the victims of such killings. (Kathrina Alvarez/Virgil Lopez/VR/AP/Sunnex)