‘Right move for Mabilog’

“Can you really send back people to where they are fleeing from?”
--Peter Maurer

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- Correct decision and right move.
These would have been the rapturous words of former Iloilo City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog’s supporters if they got the chance to meet after the assassination most recently of two Philippine mayors which happened one day apart.
First to fall was Mayor Antonio Halili of Tanauan City, Batangas, who was shot dead by a sniper while attending the flag ceremony rites in front of the City Hall on July 3.
The next was Mayor Ferdinand Bote of General Tenio, Nueva Ecija, who was killed by assassin’s bullets while being driven out of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) compound in Cabanatuan City on July 4.

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Halili had been included in President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s “narco list” and subsequently stripped of bodyguards and power over the police like Mabilog.
Although he was not included in Mr. Duterte’s deadly list, supporters have linked Bote’s murder to that of Halili.
Halili, who insisted he was never involved in illegal drugs, had feared for his life after Mr. Duterte reportedly believed in the “wrong” intelligence report that Halili was a “narco politician.”
The president has threatened “to kill” Mabilog several times in his speeches since last year, insisting that the Ilonggo mayor “is the cousin of slain drug lord Boyet Odicta.”
Based on our own recollection, the president has issued the threats to kill Mabilog seven times in different occasions and places.
His latest tirade against Mabilog was in front of Philippine councilors in Iloilo City two weeks ago.

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Like Halili, Mabilog, a Liberal Party (LP) member, repeatedly insisted he was never engaged in illegal drugs and he isn’t related to Odicta.
Mabilog is the second cousin of opposition Senator Franklin Drilon.
The president refused to listen.
He nixed any possible meeting with Mabilog
He did not believe Mabilog and continued to tarnish the mayor’s name in various gatherings where he was invited as the speaker.
Before he was ordered dismissed by the Office of the Ombudsman in October 2017 for “unexplained wealth”, Mabilog had already decided not to return in the Philippines after attending a series of conferences in Japan and Malaysia.
His wife, Marivic, and their two children, citing security concerns, left the country and joined him in an undisclosed location.
Aside from Halili and Bote, three mayors linked to illegal drugs have been killed under the Duterte administration.
They were: Samsudin Dimaukom of Datu Saudi Ampatuan in Mindanao; Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte in the Visayas; and Reynaldo Parohinog of Ozamiz City in Mindanao.
Their deaths were all links to the Duterte administration’s “all-out” war against illegal drugs.