EDITORIAL - Guns for hire

How cheap life is in this country. And how brazen the killers.

For P30,000, two men gunned down an official of the House of Representatives on June 15, Father’s Day, while he was at his daughter’s birthday party in a gated subdivision in Quezon City.

This is according to the Philippine National Police, citing the extrajudicial confession of a suspect arrested in Quezon City who allegedly got the masterminds in contact with the hired guns. The suspect decided to talk, the PNP explained, because the money for the contract was not paid.

The confession led to the arrest of another suspect in Caloocan City last Monday. This suspect reportedly acted as the lookout.

Mauricio Pulhin, chief of the House committee on ways and means’ technical staff, was at the birthday party when two men on a motorcycle barged in and shot him. As the suspects fled, they also fired at a security guard of the subdivision. Pulhin was rushed to a hospital but was declared dead.

Surveillance video footage reportedly showed the gunman and the lookout proceeding to the house of the suspect who was the first to be arrested. There the gunman and the lookout changed their clothes.

Police said the arrested suspects have identified two former employees of Pulhin as the masterminds. The arrested suspects were unhappy, the PNP said, because the pair failed to pay the promised P30,000 for the hit. Pulhin was reportedly planning to file criminal charges against the two masterminds for qualified theft and estafa.

With three men carrying out the hit, that’s P10,000 per suspect. Even ordinary people can pay that amount to get rid of an enemy.

The gunman is supposed to be a contract killer. How many people has he gunned down, at P10,000 per hit? Where did he get the gun and ammunition? Where did he get the nerve to kill? And how many more guns-for-hire are out there, waiting for the next contract?

With the existence of such people, it’s little wonder that murder has become a preferred mode for permanently eliminating political rivals and their supporters.

A hired gun also carried out the hit on broadcaster Percival Mabasa near his home in Las Piñas, with the accused mastermind, former corrections chief Gerald Bantag, still at large. But this was for a fee of P550,000 – way above the P30,000 for Pulhin.

The government must prevent this threat from worsening, before the price of a kill falls even lower, with discounts perhaps even offered online.