“Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.”
--Lao Tzu
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- If guns are blazing and the intention is to kill, there is violence.
If violence is unabated, there is a breakdown of peace and order.
If high-profile personalities like Samuel Aguilar, president of Eagle Crest Gaming and Holdings Corp., operator of STL in Iloilo province, can be ambushed by unidentified gunmen in broad daylight, there is no guarantee that ordinary people won’t be harmed by gun-toting maniacs.
Guns, or any deadly weapon for that matter, aren’t supposed to be in the hands of those who intend to create murder and mayhem; it’s the job of the police to seize loose firearms before they can be used to harm civilians.
Could the assailants have been accosted if the Iloilo Provincial Police Office (IPPO) had a check point within Brgy. Buyuan in Tigbauan town where the ambush happened?
If the area is isolated and in a national highway, it’s easy for the trigger-men to escape and avoid police check points and other dragnets.
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Whether business-related or personal, Aguilar probably knows who wanted him dead especially if it was not the first attempt against his life.
Five months ago, Aguilar also reportedly survived the first attempt by unidentified gunmen to also kill him in Alabang, Muntinlupa City.
For sure, the mastermind or masterminds did not intend to only scare him.
The grapevine says that anybody who is involved in gambling operations, legal or otherwise, in Iloilo province must have a powerful "padrino" for protection and “profit-sharing.”
If Aguilar is not from Iloilo and doesn’t have a “padrino”, it’s a big “problem.”
One of the most prominent personalities in Iloilo gambling operation, a former Philippine Constabulary (PC) sergeant, was murdered in cold blood in Iloilo City four years ago.
And he was an Ilonggo.
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After hurriedly announcing on February 23, 2018 that the former employers of murdered OFW Joanna Demafiles of Sara, Iloilo have been arrested, nothing has been heard again from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).
As I mentioned earlier, the “arrest” of suspects Nader Essam Assaf, a Lebanese national, and his wife, Mona, a Syrian national, is one thing.
Whether they will be prosecuted and be made to answer for the grisly murder is another thing.
Let’s hope all the spectacle that attended Demafiles’ sensational case will not end up in a blunderbuss and buried in newspaper files. We need action aside from condemnation.
What now, DFA?
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