PIMENTEL DEPLORES ANOTHER POLITICAL KILLING IN MINDANAO

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today condemned the murder of Vice Mayor Hadji Abdul Rashid Onos of Pantar, Lanao del Norte in what appears to be the latest case in the long list of political killings in the country.

Pimentel called on law enforcement authorities to exhaust all efforts in getting to the bottom of the slaying of Vice Mayor Onos, an opposition figure, specially in the light of the fact that he was about to assume the mayorship of Pantar town at the time of his death.

Onos was set to replace, by succession, Mayor Norlayla Limbona, who was recently disqualified by the Commission on Elections. The decision became final and executory when it was upheld by the Supreme Court.

"We in the political opposition denounce in the strongest terms the assassination of Vice Mayor Onos and we sympathize with members of his family and his constituents at this time of grief and bereavement," the minority leader said.

"His tragic death is a sordid but graphic manifestation of the breakdown of law and order in the country and the brazenness with which criminal elements ply their dreadful and evil trade."

Reports said Vice Mayor Onos was standing outside a bakery owned by one of his children in Barangay Poblacion in Pantar around 5:30 p.m. Saturday when a motorcycle with two men aboard stopped in front of him. One of the men then pulled out a gun and fired at the vice mayor in the head.

Members of Onos' family rushed him to a hospital in Iligan City but he was declared dead upon arrival.

The Philippine National Police and National Bureau of Investigation have reportedly launched separate investigations into the slaying of Vice Mayor Onos to identify the assailants and determine the motive behind the crime.

Pimentel said that if killings of political figures like this have been occurring with alarming frequency, this can be blamed on the failure of law enforcers to pin down the perpetrators and to prosecute them, as well as the perceived inefficiency of the police in securing the communities from lawless elements and in preventing crimes.

He challenged the PNP, NBI and other laws enforcement agencies to redeem their tattered image and to dispel apprehensions that the slaying of Vice Mayor Onos may end up being another innocuous entry in the dizzying statistics of unsolved murders in the country.