MMDA executive says illegal vendors' hired guns out to get him

Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) sidewalk clearing operations chief Roberto Esquivel said yesterday that hired guns, not communist hitmen, are out to get him.

In a phone interview, he said he has information that leads him to believe that the gunmen who killed his driver, Johnny Agbay, and wounded his 14-year-old son, Mico, are not members of the Partisano (Partidong Marxista-Leninista ng Pilipinas), a supposed breakaway group of the New People’s Army. Leaflets from Partisano were left by the gunmen after the attack in San Pedro, Laguna Monday morning.

“They are fakes. I have information that they are hired assassins. The information I have jives with the information that the Philippine National Police has,” Esquivel said, adding that the gunmen could have been hired by a syndicate that provides protection to illegal sidewalk vendors.

He said the syndicate had tried to kill him before but the plan was aborted when some of its members were neutralized by the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The gunmen “might have been attracted by easy money. The important thing is to identify who hired them,” Esquivel said.

He said that at the moment, he and his family are being secured by policemen and National Bureau of Investigation agents. He also said his son is recovering from the wounds he sustained in the ambush.

Esquivel said the ambush has not deterred him from continuing his job at the MMDA. – With Ed Amoroso