Are we impressed?

The newspapers screamed the directive of PNP Director General Oscar Albayalde to his men to solve the ambush of San Fernando, Cebu, Mayor Lakambini Reluya where three persons including her husband were killed. If we read his lips, he was saying “get the criminals”.

Albayalde set a deadline of two weeks. We are impressed! His swift exercise of command responsibility is salutary. I do not want to call this order OA (overacting) because it may be achievable. Didn’t the authorities file appropriate charges against persons believed to be responsible for the death of Representative Rodel Batocabe? The reported solution came within two weeks following the crime. So, this boast has some basis. In this light, we applaud Albayalde’s quick administrative response to a dreadful example of the deteriorating peace and order situation and say that’s OA, Oscar Albayalde, overachieving.

So much for the pun…err, fun. Let us express our thoughts as if we were Tal Fulano, the fictional Spanish philosopher trying to understand just what may be happening. What have we heard from Albayalde as his response to the recent killings here? There have been murders of persons occupying high positions. There was a vice mayor of Ronda town. He was a lawyer. The attack was so brazen because the assailants committed the crime near a courthouse. Wow, to Rondahanons, the town’s tragedy didn’t end there. What happened to the mayor of that municipality was even more horrible for he was killed inside the municipal hall. In those two high-profile crimes, I didn’t recall any directive from Albayalde tasking his men to solve the crimes within a specific period.

There were two officers of Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency killed in daylight ambushes not too long ago. Considering we have been treated to daily news of reported illegal drug peddlers being felled by policemen’s guns, we were shocked to hear lawmen involved in the bloody campaign against narcotics, this time on the receiving end. While the victims were shot dead in different places as to entertain the idea those events were not connected, yet their murders happened in alarmingly so close succession for us to think that somehow they were linked. We were not told what action police took to bring the criminals to justice. I was not impressed that Albayalde ignored ordering to look for the criminals.

Then, there was the killing of a lady assistant prosecutor just a few days ago. Like the late Ronda vice mayor’s case, she was driving her car when assailants ambushed her. The crime scene was only about 400 meters from where the PDEA officer fell. Many frightened witnesses would later exclaim the desperate words of then Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez (who served the country from 1961 to 1965) “what’s happening to our country?” Perhaps, Albayalde has an answer and his command to his men for a quick solution to these crimes is a part of it.

Hope springs eternal, they say. We hope Albayalde’s order to pursue the men who assaulted Reluya is not empty rhetoric. For it to translate beyond mere impression, it should likewise be a directive to run after all criminals starting with the murderers in the high-profile crimes mentioned here including whoever violated the rights of the tokhang victims.