While both anguish and terror continue to hound the appaling destiny of our society, assassinations have become “the favorite method of terrorists of whatever ideological stripe.” During the most unguarded moments of their victims, the assassins strike stealthily and treacherously. Targets of assassins seem to have been carefully chosen to unleash maximum impact to the public consciousness.
As the haystack of unresolved politically-motivated killings continues to mount, the masterminds and their hired guns persist to mock the manifest inability of the fledgling Aquino government to curb, if not to arrest, the incessant trend of political violence and counterviolence. Hopes for the retribution of the assassins are dampened if not completely shattered.
It is with those thoughts that we remain terrified spectators of the series of assassinations that may eventually ignite chaos and anarchy reminiscent of the deposed dictator’s years.
Although liquidations have become an “attractive course of action” among different forces within the Philippine political spectrum, these politically-inspired murders are not only confined to our times. Assassinations of renowned public figures date back to the era of the first Philippine Republic.
In 1899, because of his blazing political ambitions to unseat Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo as the president of the new Philippine Republic, Gen. Antonio Luna was shot by Aguinaldo’s bodyguards.
President Manuel Roxas survived an assassination attempt plotted by Julio Guillen, who was disgruntled with the former’s leadership. It was also during these years when “peasant leader Juan Feleo was kidnapped, murdered, and his body dumped into the Pampanga River” upon his return from the peace talks with the Roxas government.
But it was during the horrendous years of the Marcos dictatorship that “political liquidation became almost a policy of the powers that be. It was Marcos who let loose the death squad monster.” Antecedent to the declaration of Martial Law, his henchmen exhausted all clandestine means to inflict mayhem to those it regarded as harmful to its strategic interests. In the last two years of his dictatorship, arrests and detentions waned, to give way to the new method of dealing with the escalating political dissent. “The military then resorted to salvaging, the direct elimination of key opposition figures and dissidents.”
Primary targets of summary executions were usually peasant leaders, labor organizers, and student activists all branded as communists or “enemies of democracy.” The victims who were mostly based in the countryside were not only denied their chance to invoke their legal rights but were also systematically silenced from directly linking Marcos to the atrocities. The selective fielding of assassins enabled the embattled Marcos regime to effectively deal with those who dared challenge its authority. While the clandestine operations lend a semblance of constitutionalism in the veneer of his regime, Marcos however kept “a blood-stained left hand of repression, of intolerance, of barbarism safely concealed from public view, only to be raised when nobody but the victim is looking.”
The whole nation was shocked by the cold-blooded murder of prominent opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. Ninoy’s assassination sparked the series of rallies and demonstrations that gradually eroded the political bases of Marcos. The Agrava Fact-finding Board was asked to investigate the case. Alleged conspirators of the crime were charged only to be acquitted. Since then, authorities have not been able to identify the real plotters of the assassination.
In 1984, Zamboanga’s well-acclaimed mayor, Cesar Climaco, was murdered by gunmen closely identified with the Marcos government. Two years later, Fr. Tulio Favali, an Italian priest based in North Cotabato, was mercilessly killed by members of the CHDF, while Fr. Rudy Romano of Cebu was abducted by armed men identified as military operatives. In the same year, four days after the snap elections, opposition leader Evelio Javier was gunned down in broad daylight in the town plaza of Antique. The New People’s Army swiftly responded with their own brand of justice. They began to collect “blood debts” starting with the slaying of Brig. Gen. Tomas Karingal, a marked notorious figure because of his role in the violent dispersal of the Artex strike. It was the first major liquidation operation mounted by the Alex Boncayao Brigade, a unit of the Armed CIty Partisans of the New People’s Army based in Metro Manila.
When President Aquino assumed the reins of government, renewed hopes of improving the deteriorating human rights situation were raised. But the same hopes were shattered when the brutal murder of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) Chairman Rolando Olalia greeted the term of President Aquino. This was only the beginning of the series of politically-motivated murders that were to plague the struggling Aquino government. A few weeks before Congress opened, Bernabe Buscayno alias Ka Dante was ambushed. Ka Dante survived the attack but two of his companions died. Weeks later, Fr. Conrado Balweg and some members of the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army met the same fate in Abra. This time, reports held the New People Army responsible. And on the night of August 2, 1987 when he was about to reach his residence, former Local Government Secretary Jaime Ferrer succumbed to a gruesome assassination. Early speculations attributed Ferrer’s murder to his staunch advocacy of the formation of paramilitary vigilante groups to stem the tide of the growing communist insurgency or disgruntled officers-in-charge ousted from office.
With the series of assassinations, investigative commissions were created one after the other. But until now, these commissions are still left groping in the dark as to the identities of the assassins who until now enjoy their unjust exoneration from the heinous crimes they have committed.
Recently, we have witnessed the assassination of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) secretary-general, Lean Alejandro. The president’s gesture of creating another commission to investigate the murder of Alejandro would be but another rhetorical if not an irreverent act, if the wave of political violence would continue to sweep the nation.
With the deteriorating peace and order situation in the country, our leaders are pressed to be genuinely committed to the cracking down of the forces of violent dissent aimed at tearing the nation apart. If not, these dark forces shall persist to lurk and conspire to scuttle whatever is left of the government’s effort to preserve its stability. Unfortunately in these times indecisiveness and delay on the part of government will most likely lengthen the string of political violence and counter-violence while we remain to be horrified speculators asking ourselves, who would be next?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The article is republished in its original form. No edits were made to conform with current style guidelines.
