Ilagan Mayor Albano shot 20 times in restaurant

Whoever were responsible for the assassination of Ilagan, Isabela Mayor Delfinito Albano really went out of their way to know his schedule and track him down all the way to a Quezon City restaurant. They also made sure that he would really be shot dead because they fired 20 bullets through him. A retired Army general said that Mayor Albano had contacts with Communist rebels but denied that the military had anything to do with the shooting.

This latest assassination shows that the rampant assassinations has graduated from the shooting of media and activist persons to people having official positions in the government. The saddest part about all these assassinations is that to date the persons responsible have not been identified. It is not even known if the past assassinations were individual cases or whether there is a mastermind behind the series of killings. One thing is certain, there will be more assassinations and they will not stop until the people behind the past killings are identified, apprehended, tried and convicted in Court.

The first question to ask is if all the shooting were related. It is difficult to believe that the series of newsmen and activists murdered were all isolated cases. But who would be interested in shooting media men and activists all over the country? An interesting note is that no reporter from any major newspaper has even been threatened. Metro Manila newsmen feel totally secure. As a general rule, when a newsman is murdered, the first step to tracking down the killer is to read the past works of the murdered newsman to determine the individual or groups that he may have offended with his writings. But to date, the authorities do not even have an inkling on whether the series of murders had a common relation or just individual cases that just happened in many parts of the country by sheer coincidence. We hope that the murder of Mayor Delfinito Albano is the last case of a mayor being killed and that the person responsible for the shooting be identified and arrested. Whoever shot him must have a strong hatred for him. You don’t shoot a person 20 times to kill him. The murderer must have been venting his fury.

If it is true that the slain mayor had connections with the communists, then he may have been shot by persons or groups that are anti-communist. But the way he was killed seems to indicate that the persons behind the killing have a personal rancor against him. As we said earlier, you don’t kill a man by shooting him 20 times. A trained killer will fire only a few shots but will know the fatal places to hit the victim. Shooting anyone 20 times in a restaurant will certainly attract a lot of attention and increase the risk of one being apprehended.

We hope that all these senseless shooting stop. But they will not stop until the people behind the past shooting are apprehended and jailed. At this point, that seem farfetched. So we must be prepared for more shooting. The only good thing about the last shooting is that there were no innocent bystanders that were victimized.