Lawmaker’s police escort gunned down

SAN CARLOS CITY, Pangasinan — "They missed their real target."

Thus said third district Rep. Generoso Tulagan after his police escort was gunned down near City Hall here yesterday morning, in what he suspected to be a politically motivated incident.

Tulagan, who is seeking a third term, said SPO4 Hidalgo Palisoc, 54, who had been with him since 1998, asked permission to go home after they, coming from a barangay affair, had coffee at his residence at about 2:30 a.m.

Palisoc, he said, wanted to hear Easter Sunday Mass. But while he was on his way home on Soriano street aboard a motorcycle, he was attacked.

Palisoc sustained 13 bullet wounds from a caliber .45 pistol. Witnesses said one of the gunmen had had coffee at a burger stand near the crime scene.

"I am condemning in the strongest terms the series of killings in our city and in other towns in my district," Tulagan said.

"I am helpless. I am asking the national government to pay attention to these killings," he added.

Earlier, the chairman of Barangay Bacnar here and another one from Malasiqui town, also within the third district, were killed in separate incidents. Both slayings were believed to be politically motivated.

Alarmed by these killings, Tulagan is asking the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to place the entire third district under its control.

Convinced that politics was behind Palisoc’s killing, Palisoc said he has asked Philippine National Police chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. and Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. to effect a total revamp of this city’s police force.

Tulagan said Palisoc, who had been like a brother to him, had intimated that he had received death threats because of his links with the congressman.

Someone, he said, even advised Palisoc to part ways with him or else face the consequences.

Tulagan himself recounted that motorcycle-riding men had trailed him in his campaign sorties, prompting him to take extra precautions.

Lawyer Temie Lambino, provincial election supervisor, said he now has no other recourse but to categorize this city as an "area of immediate concern."

Lambino said an augmentation force from the Armed Forces will be deployed here to defuse the tension arising from Palisoc’s killing.

Tulagan is running against retired general Orlando Soriano and Generoso Mamaril. — With Cesar Ramirez