--HELEN PREJEAN
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- For every lawyer murdered in the Philippines and the killers managed to slip away, justice bleeds.
If justice is denied, democracy wobbles.
More injustices, or more deadly attacks on unarmed civilians and officers of the court and the cases are unsolved, means imminent collapse of democracy.
If democracy is dead, lawlessness, abuses by those in power, and authoritarian rule reign.
If a crusading lawyer like Benjamin Tarug Ramos Jr. can be muzzled violently and no justice is given, what are the chances of ordinary laborers, farm workers, and the poor if they, too, will be eviscerated when they seek redress for their legitimate grievances?
As a defender of the oppressed and the voiceless in society, the state should have ensured the protection and safety of Ramos and his ilk who are vulnerable to brutal attacks and violence.
And now that Ramos is dead, the state should utilize all its corpulent resources to hunt down the killers.
Its chilling effects will be felt not only by Ramos’ colleagues in Negros, but also by all members of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) all over the country.
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Motorcycle-riding men gunned down Ramos, of Brgy. Biniculi, Kabankalan City around 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 6, 2018 at Rojas Street, Brgy. 5.
The 56-year-old Ramos, secretary-general of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL)-Negros Chapter, was taking a break after some paper works for his pro bono clients when shot.
Report said he suffered three gunshot wounds at the right backside and left upper chest of his body and was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
The lawyer was “maliciously and irresponsibly tagged in a public poster by the Philippine police as among the so-called personalities of the underground armed movement,” according to NUPL.
NUPL said Ramos was the 34th lawyer killed under President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration. Excluding judges and prosecutors, he was the 24th member of the profession killed and 8th in the Visayas.
Violence should not be the answer if an establishment or a powerful and well-connected group is annoyed by the advocacy of crusading lawyers.
The use of force and treachery is the handiwork of cowards and psychos.
That’s how we best describe both the killers and the mastermind or masterminds of Ramos’ murder.
The recent wave of lawlessness that snuffed out the life of a brave lawyer should be condemned not because Ramos was a lawyer, but also because murder is a crime.
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I have declared this several times and I am declaring it again here: there will be no construction of the much-ballyhooed Panay-Guimaras-Negros bridge this year.
As long as politicians in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and other government agencies are the ones doing all the talking, no project will ever romp off.
Only the technical people, experts, and non-political personalities, especially in the business, private, and diplomatic sectors have the credibility when it comes to giving projections on certain multi-billion infrastructure projects like airports, domes, damns, highways, and bridges.
Politicians have zero credibility when it comes to implementation of mammoth projects.
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It’s mind-boggling that Police Superintendent Santiago Ylanan Rapiz, a trained and quick-witted police official, will trade shots with fellow cops who came to arrest him allegedly in a buy-bust operation in Dipolog City on Monday night, November 5.
Rapiz, assigned at the Logistics Branch of the Zamboanga del Norte Police Provincial Office, was killed in an anti-drug operation of the Philippine National Police-Counter-Intelligence Task Force (CITF) and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in front of Andres Bonifacio College Gymnasium, in Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte.
Even a rookie cop knows that his chances of survival are nil if he opts to shoot it out when he is already cornered and overpowered.
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