SSS exec shot in Maguindanao

COTABATO CITY — Motorcycle-riding men shot and wounded the female regional manager of the Social Security System (SSS) in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao last Monday.

The attack on SSS executive Erlinda Rapacon came just five days after the fatal ambush in a busy spot here of lawyer Arnel Datukun, who handled foreign-funded projects in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Rapacon was en route to Midsayap, her hometown in North Cotabato, when the armed men overtook the van she was riding in along a secluded stretch of the Cotabato-Davao Highway in Sultan Kudarat.

Witnesses said the armed men ordered all of the van’s passengers to disembark, shot Rapacon in the head and hastily left the scene.

Rapacon’s brother-in-law, North Cotabato provincial board member Celestino Rapacon, told reporters that they were certain that she was really the target since all her companions were unharmed.

Rapacon’s relatives said she was in critical condition in an undisclosed hospital in North Cotabato.

The incident occurred just five days after two men clad in Army uniforms ambushed and killed Arnel Datukun, manager of the ARMM’s Social Fund Project (ASFP), and his driver, Michael Mohammad, at a busy intersection here.

Datukun and Mohammad were on their way to the office when they were fired at with M-16 rifles.

Datukun, a key adviser of ARMM Gov. Datu Zaldy Ampatuan, was a city councilor from 1998 to 2001 and dean of the College of Law of the Notre Dame University here before he was appointed as ASFP manager early this year.