EDITORIAL -  The buck does not stop there

After initially pointing to hired guns from the communist New People’s Army, the Philippine National Police announced yesterday that four cops assigned in Batangas had been placed under custody in connection with the torching of a school building in Taysan, Batangas City that killed two poll watchers, one of them a teacher, and injured 12 others performing election duties. Two of the cops were reportedly identified by witnesses.

The speedy action is laudable, but the buck cannot possibly stop at the doorstep of four low-ranking members of the police Regional Special Operations Group in Southern Tagalog. Investigators should see to it that the motive for the despicable crime is established and the mastermind caught. If the accusations against them are true, those four cops were clearly doing someone else’s bidding when they poured gasoline around the polling precinct at the Pinagbayanan Elementary School and then set the building on fire.

There is a special place in hell for the mastermind and the perpetrators of this crime, which killed teacher Nellie Banaag and poll watcher Leticia Ramos as they were working with the 12 other election personnel at 3 a.m. The perpetrators could have ordered the election personnel to get out of harm’s way. Instead, in what could have been an attempt to avoid identification by witnesses, the thugs ordered the 14 victims at gunpoint to lie on the floor as the school was put to the torch.

This is a crime that cannot be included in the long list of unexplained killings in this country. If those four cops are truly involved, investigators should determine if any higher-ranking official of the PNP provincial command was aware of the plan to destroy a polling center. Even looking the other way — an act of omission by a superior officer — should be punished. There should be no sacred cows here. Whether politician or ranking PNP officer, the murderers must be caught and locked up for life.