Business rivalry, politics explored

Police are looking into business rivalry and politics as possible motives in the ambush-slaying of the mayor of Mabitac, Laguna and his driver in Teresa, Rizal last Monday afternoon.

Superintendent Arturo Tolentino, Rizal police director, said the two angles cropped up when two of the killers of Mayor Bernardo Sayarot and his driver, Gabriel Fuentes, confessed to being guns-for-hire.

"During interrogation, they admitted having received money to kill the mayor. But they do not know the people behind the ambush because they were dealing only with a go-between," Tolentino said.

Sayarot and Fuentes died of multiple gunshot wounds when six heavily armed, motorcycle-riding men peppered their Mitsubishi wagon with bullets in Bagong Bayani, Teresa town at about 3:30 p.m.

Sayarot was en route from Mabitac to his residence at Valle Verde Subdivision in Pasig City.

The gunmen shot dead a member of the Teresa police, SPO2 Eduardo Sena, when they passed by a checkpoint in Dulog Bayan, barely two kilometers from the municipal police station.

Sayarot’s attackers shot it out with Sena’s team. After the firefight, suspects Ronaldo Bullasog and Edwin Librea were arrested.

Tolentino admitted that they initially suspected that the New People’s Army (NPA) was behind the ambush-slaying.

"But as the investigation progressed, we had to consider the mayor’s business and political enemies," he said.

But the police official said communist rebels are actively operating in Sayarot’s hometown.

Apparently oblivious to developments in the case, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes condemned Sayarot’s killing, saying the assassination showed the National Democratic Front’s insincerity in pursuing peace.

"The killing (of Sayarot), to me, is a sign perhaps that the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) and NDF are not serious abut talking peace. If they want peace, they should show more sincerity in arriving at a peaceful resolution to peace problems," Reyes said.

"It’s difficult to proceed with the peace talks while they are committing atrocities," he said. "They should show more sincerity."

The peace talks were halted last June 13 after government negotiators called for an indefinite recess to protest the NDF’s justification of the assassination of former Cagayan Rep. Rodolfo Aguinaldo.

In another development, Sen. Rodolfo Biazon expressed alarm yesterday on the reported increasing activities of communist guerrillas in Cavite.

"Cavite has been, through all these years, free from the influence of the CPP-NDF-NPA," he said.

He warned that the presence of rebels in Cavite could affect economic activities in the Calabarzon area and destabilize the labor sector there. — With Jaime Laude and Aurea Calica