Monster in our midst

Everything has changed in Dumaguete City.
The peace, the security, are gone.
Vanished.
I got a call early this week about the bomb scare at the Dumaguete hall of justice, while it was happening.
Lawyers, court employees, litigants were scampering to safety. Judges were seen getting out of the courtrooms, while still wearing their judicial robes, the caller told me.
I immediately alerted the news team.
I think we have to start accepting the realty that Dumaguete city is no longer a safe place to be, unlike what it was when we were growing up.
Growing up as a kid, you can walk along the streets of Alfonso XIII, without fear of anything.
The phrase “bomb threat” was even unheard of.
Now in Dumaguete, extrajudicial killings have become a cottage industry.
Some people brush this aside and accept it, saying “Ok lang, criminal bitaw”, “Ok lang, drug pusher bitaw”
Politicians, aside from keeping quiet, turn a blind eye.
Hear-no-evil, see-no-evil.
It seems they accept extrajudicial killings, as a short-cut method of dispensing justice.
Perhaps, some politicians’ children fell victim of prohibited drugs, that is why they don’t lift any finger in stopping extrajudicial killings.
Unfortunately, it seems that tolerated vigilantes have metamorphosed into a much deadlier monster.
We are now unsure whether the so-called vigilantes, welcomed by some, have graduated to become hired guns.
Being a hired gun is a more logical career-advancement, from being a mere executioner.
At least, there is money in being a hired gun.
I fear what has been tolerated as a necessary evil, has transformed
into an uncontrollable monster.
The 'solution' has become the problem.
Who will now determine who deserves to die extra judicially?
Not the courts anymore.
Who will determine whether the target is a criminal?
Not the courts anymore.
It is now the one who hires an assassin who determines who must be extra-judicially exterminated like a cockroach.
That is a total breakdown of the rule of law.
Now, with the recent bomb scare, the local judiciary is not being spared.
The judiciary is the strongest pillar in maintaining order in society.
If the judiciary becomes ineffective because of a breakdown in security, law and order, anarchy will ensue.
Beware, I think were seeing a monster in our midst.

What is happening to our city, mayor?

Many of us perhaps have asked the question as to why unsolved killings have gone unabated in Dumaguete City.
My personal answer is simple: A failure of governance.
And the one who should be accountable is nobody else but the city mayor of Dumaguete City, Mayor Agustin R. Perdices.
Sometimes, I don’t feel like paying my taxes because I feel I do not get my money’s worth.
Mayor Perdices must, at the very least, provide an explanation, directly to the people as to why unsolved extrajudicial killings continue with impunity in this city.
Even a single loss of life must be fully explained, to the public’s satisfaction.
The way I see it, mayor Perdices’ attitude is playing deaf and dumb. No explanation.
I will trace back history and re-phrase the question posed by the late Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez in his hospital bed after surviving an assassination attempt in 1983. Pelaez had asked: What is happening to our country, general?
So we ask: “What is happening to our city, mayor?”
If you would notice, Perdices is an accountable official who has not accounted for what is happening to the city he is sworn to serve.
We have not heard anything from him.
If we look at the local government code, the overall responsibility of keeping the peace is with the mayor.
As the chief executive of the city, direct responsibility for peace and order lies with the city mayor.
Atop his desk, U.S. President Harry S. Truman placed an inscription: “The buck stops here”
In other words, as chief executive, he cannot pass the buck to anybody because he assumes responsibility for the way the country is to be governed.
But not mayor Perdices.
As a matter of fact, he is so onion-skinned, that he is reportedly mad at this newspaper when his picture was placed nearby the photo of the body of physician Ami Madamba who was murdered in cold-blood.
That is not the issue, mayor. The issue is your failure, as mayor, to solve these crimes in the city.
Perdices has been mayor for---how many years? Seventeen years? Where has he steered this promising city?
I fear that Dr. Madamba’s death will be trivialized to a mere statistic, in addition to a growing list of prominent persons whose murders have remained unsolved.
Among them are the late city treasurer Erlinda Tumongha, Angeling Lajato.
If the murders of the mayor’s own department head, and one of his closest friends cannot be solved, how do we expect the murders of ordinary people be solved?
Let us write, for the mayor’s reminder, his duties under the local government code.
He is supposed to be paid by our money to perform these duties.
The mayor is duty bound to formulate a peace and order plan for the city, and upon its approval, implement the same.
Where is this plan? How is its implementation? How effective has it been?
The mayor is legally tasked to exercise general and operational control and supervision over the police.
He is legally tasked to call upon appropriate law enforcement agencies to suppress disorder, riot, lawless violence.
He is tasked to apprehend violators of the law when public interest so requires.
He is legally tasked to issue executive orders for the faithful and appropriate enforcement and execution of laws and ordinances.
The failure of governance is the result of years of mis-management.
How many city officials have been suspended for graft-related issues under mayor Perdices’ watch?
Not only that. We have received documents showing that the tentacles of corruption have reached right at the doorsteps of the city mayor’s office.
The city government must account for the wasteful spending.
These funds could have been properly channeled to provide our police with resources to fight criminality.
Why buy T-shirts for parades?
Why even try to appropriate funds to buy cell phones for city officials?
Why use people’s money for private purposes like nose repair, and airplane tickets?
With these wasteful spending, what comes to my mind is that mythical story of emperor Nero playing the fiddle while Rome was burning.
The local press has been performing its role to society by informing our people about the wrong things that have been happening in government.
We report, hoping that things will change for the better.
To our disappointment, it seems things have changed for the worst.
What is the result of government mis-management?
Lives are unnecessarily lost.
Precious lives of students, government workers, doctors, senior citizens, ordinary citizens.
There is a wave of uncontrollable, unstoppable crimes.
Criminals are lording it over.
The unabated killings in the city are a result of a failure of
governance.
We are very frustrated.
Very disappointed.
Very outraged.

Extrajudicial killings

Extrajudicial killings are not uncommon in the Philippines.
In Dumaguete City, they have gone unabated. The authorities there are helpless.
Let me link here another incident of extrajudicial killing.
Remember the infamous shootout/rubout in Ortigas last year (November 6 2005) involving the Traffic Management Group and some young scions of Valleverde who were tagged as carjackers?
It's been a year and the recommendations of the Commission on Human Rights for the filing of murder charges against the TMD personnel are still at the Ombudsman's files.
If you want to see the video of the incident that was recorded by the UNTV, go to this link:
www.clearfx.blogspot.com
See the hair-raising manner policemen conduct their operations in the Philippines.

Some questions for The Equalizers

As I am listing some questions, the vigilantes in Dumaguete City have reportedly vowed they will wipe out all drug pushers in the city.
I am just curious about this style of dispensing justice. I don't know much about its philosophy.
And since these vigilantes have maintained communication links with local officals like the city mayor and reportedly the governor (I heard they're text-mates), I hope The Equalizers will also take time to answer these sincere questions (mainly on their operational aspects) by an ordinary Dumagueteno:

01. How do you choose your targets for extrajudicial killings? What is your basis in choosing your targets?
02. What is the process of selection (of targets) that you follow?
03. Do you target peddlers of all kinds of illegal drugs, or sellers of only a specific type of illegal drugs?
04. Are sellers of shabu your only targets? What about sellers of marijuana? What about sellers of high-end drugs like Ecstasy?
05 Do you also target owners and operators of pharmacies or drug stores illegally selling (under the table, below the counter) regulated drugs like expectorants, Rubitusin, etc?
06. Do you also target sellers of herione or coccaine being marketed to the wealthier breed of drug users?
07. Do you intend to compensate those innocent civilians who are inadvertently hit by your operations, or do you regard them as collateral damage?
08. Why did you choose "drug pushers" as your targets?
09. Do you intend to strike also at perpetrators of other types of crimes like smugglers, currupt government officials, tax evaders, and other white-collar criminals?
10. Which of the different "drug pushers" are your targets, the big-time wholesaler or the petty retailers or resellers? Or do you distinguish?
11.Have you killed any big-time wholesaler of shabu? (If you kill these big-time wholesalers who are the source, you will spare the lives of these petty retailers. It will save you a lot of bullets and other expenses, don't you think?)
12. Who is financing your operations?
13. Are you sure your backers are not rival big-time drug pushers who just want to take over the territory? Or who will just later fill the void that you created?
I hope we can be enlightened with answers to these questions. Vigilantism is something new for many of our people, including myself.
Perhaps if the public is enlightened, they might just support House Speaker Jose De Venecia's campiagn to revise the Constitution, and repeal the due process, and the presumption-of-innocence clauses in our constitution.
Or we might just repeal the entire bill of rights.
Who knows?

Vigilante killings as tourist attraction: Why not?

Vigilante extrajudicial killings in Dumaguete City are unabated.
Local officials seem helpless in purging this lawlessness.
Some Dumaguetenos even welcome this brand of instant justice.
So why not make vigilante extrajudicial killings a tourist attraction for the city?
This should be a highly potential tourist attraction.
I undertand local tourism movers are cracking their heads trying to determine what Dumaguete City can offer, something that is unique.
Imagine, the rest of the civilized world are advocating for respect for human rights and observance of due process.
But here is a city that is experiencing executions of presumed guilty criminals in the streets.
This should be something interesting for the people coming from all corners of the globe.
Local tourism promoters should invite visitors to witness how viginlantism and extrajudicial killings are being done.
Tourism promoters should print posters and sell Dumaguete as a "Land of Vigilante Killings" or the "Vigilante capital of the Philippines".
Local officials apparently are playing a blind eye to this spate of lawlessness, and have offered no solution.
It also seems there is a certain degree of public apathy to this brazen criminality.
So why not make money out of it?
According to reports, vigilantes, identifying themselves as "The Equalizers" are executing supossedly known drug personalities.
They have vowed to wipe out these illegal drug pushers.
The "Equalizers", not the courts, decide who to convict and who to kill.
But what would happen if all drug pushers in the city are exeterminated without the benefit of a trial? Will this spell the end of "vigilante tourism"?
No so.
The vigilantes can be requested to shift their targets to currupt public officials.
Surely, they will not run out of targets.
Seriously, as a Dumageuteno, seeing unstoppable vigilante killings in the city of gentle people, local officials making themselves appear as hopeless, a public that seemingly just shrug their shoulders....
Good Lord.
I just shake my head.

Dumaguete City, the Philippine's newest vigilante capital

Welcome to Dumaguete City, the country's newest capital for vigilante killings.
What used to be a city known for the gentleness of the breeze, and the general demeanor of its residents, is now fast making a mark as the country's next vigilante capital.
Dumaguete City, the capital of Negros Oriental in Central Visayas is the place where I grew up.
It used to be known as a "university town" mainly due to the number of universities and colleges that host thousands of students coming from different places in the Visayas and Mindanao.
There is the more than a hundred year old Silliman University, founded by American missionaries who aspired to spread Christian doctrines of love and peace.
Roman Catholic schools also abound in Dumaguete City like Saint Paul College which is also more than a hundred years old, Dumaguete Cathedral College, Don Bosco and others.
A privately owned school, Foundation University and a state-owned university, the Negros Oriental State University add to the bustling academic environment.
But lately, Dumaguete has lost its tag as a "university town."
It is fast becoming the newest capital for "vigilantism", succeeding the crown then worn by Davao City, and not too long ago, neighboring Cebu City.
Extrajudicial killings now pervade in the city.
There are the vigilantes freely roaming the streets of Dumaguete, and engaging on a killing spree of alleged "menaces" of society, principally the so-called peddlers of illegal drugs.
They call themselves the Equalizers. But as to what exactly they are trying to equalize, nobody knows, and the members do not care to explain.
They decide who are to be exterminated. They act as prosectuor, judge and executioner.
And just like Santa Claus at Christmas time, they're making a list, checking it twice, finding out whose naughty or nice.
But what can be gathered is that those who are killed extrajudicially, supposedly known in the city's drug underworld, are residents of the city's slum areas and not those from posh subdivisions and villages.
In short, the supposedly evil men who are exterminated like pests and condemned as such without the benefit of a trial are not the rich but are---you guessed it--- the poor again.
Apparently, killing the presumably evil men who are poor, andnot the presumably evil men who are rich, is their way to bring equality in society.
According to local news reports, their modus operandi is to straff and riddle their cased targets with bullets leading to their instant deaths, and the 'Equalizers' scamper, riding and then disappearing on motor bikes. These perpetrators usually wear bonnets to prevent people from identifying them.
They have become so bold that they have threatened to wipe out drug criminals in the city.
Amazingly, not a few residents from this supposedly highly educated and civilized community don't seem to bother.
Some even, are giving their stamp of approval. The local officialdom are seen to be projecting a hear-no-evil-see-no-evil attitude.
The attitude in the air seems to be "we'll it's ok, anyway its the presumably evil men who are being exterminated."
"Good riddance. Just don't kill the innocent," some reportedly say.
What is viewed by a multitude in the outside world as uncivilized, barbaric, outlandish, as it denies man's fundamental and cherished human right to due process, is apparently and ironically welcomed by a number of the locals.
It may even just be promoted as a tourism attraction, just as the local leaders there are looking for a unique tourist attaraction for Dumaguete City.
So if you want to experience a bizarre kind of instant justice, come and visit Dumaguete.
It's just an hour's plane ride from Manila.
Stay there for a few days (preferably on weekends), keep tuned to the local t.v. or radio for instant text-message announcements of a killing. Chances are, you may just witness vigilantism at its best.
If you are quick enough to get to the site of an extrajudicial killing, you will find a pool of blood, a lifeless body with several fresh gunshot wounds, and perhaps responding policemen who may arrive at the scene later than you.
With the unabated extrajudicial killings by messianic vigilantes, Dumaguete is "re-inventing" itself.
It's becoming a virtual killing field.