Killings Will Decline if Murderers Are Exposed

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

If our law enforcement agencies could identify expeditiously the killer, his accomplice and principal on the spate of extra-judicial killings and assassination in our country – just like what happened in the Percy Lapid, Davao City model Yvonette Chua, and some of the 34 ’sabungeroos” (cockfighting aficionados), would be murderers in the Philippines would be discouraged to do their dastardly acts.

Protesters march towards a town square during a rally calling for justice for the victims of alleged extra-judicial killings of local villagers, leaders and other human rights activists in Negros province and other townships in the central Philippines and other parts of the country in Manila, Philippines.  (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Look how an active police under the administration of President Bongbong Marcos had done to slowly recoup the confidence of our people to law enforcers when through effective sleuthing on those security cameras, videos of other people capturing the footages of the corpus delecti  (body of the crime), and the come-on of being qualified on the Witness Protection, Security and Benefit Program of the country  (and spared with eventual conviction) even killers like Joel Escorial and Army Private First Class Delfin Sialsa of fire breathing commentator Lapid and the stunner Chua, respectively, would easily rat to the cops like what they did to then Bureau of Corrections Director-General Gerald Q. Bantag and cohorts and  Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante, III (former President Rodrigo Duterte’s chief security) and ilk.

If the Marcos Administration could abruptly identify the principals and the killers behind the abductions in various occasions and places of those 34 sabungeros, the unabated extra-judicial killings and assassination in the Philippines would be mitigated significantly.

These sabungeros were suspected killed because they did e-sabong "website cloning" or spoofing and sabotaging their roosters so they would lose while secretly betting on their opponents’ entries. Even though they committed a nefarious act against their fellow humans, the latter have no right to murder those involved. They should sue them instead in court and wait how blinded Lady Justice – the Roman goddess Justicia - to convict or absolve them.

The spate extra judicial killings – or what the Filipinos bastardized called “salvaging” have been unabated – specially during the term of Duterte where cops have blood on their hands – against our defenseless citizens suspected if not actually selling narcotics because nobody courageously file a criminal case against the culprits.

Under Duterte, life was cheap based on the 12, 000 who were killed according to Human Rights Watch because they were involved in the selling of illegal drugs.

A retired police colonel, who asked on conditioned of anonymity, told us media men in a social function that assassination and murder swell during the Duterte Administration compared to the present dispensation because there was an order allegedly in the higher echelon of the government in the first dispensation as part of the quota in the war of drugs.

With a pro-active citizenry and an efficient law enforcement in the police and the National Bureau of Investigation resolving with dispatch those murder cases and apprehending those malefactors, President Marcos, Department of Interior & Local Government Secretary Benjur Abalos, Philippine National Police Chief Director Gen. Rodolfo Azurin and his successors could ride with the glory and plaudits given by this grateful nation. These would be the legacy of the Marcos Administration that it could reaps upon ending its reign in June 30, 2028.