Sniper’s kill: new level in rash of murders

All the publicized executions of drug traffickers since President Duterte assumed office last June 30, 2016 were known to have used ordinary gunfire, mostly at close range, by unidentified motorcycle-riding killers or gunmen in a van. Police call them DUIs or deaths under investigation.

Firepower intensifies in police operations, when the activity is covered by a warrant, for search or arrest, and M16s are standard issue. In the July 30, 2017 raid on the houses of Ozamis City mayor Reynaldo Parajojinog, which resulted in the killing of 14 people, including the mayor and famiy members, surely there was massive firepower. Even in the Nov. 5, 2016 killing of Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. and a cellmate in the Baybay jail, long arms were used in the alleged firefight he had with the police who were to arrest him.

This is the first though since the Duterte term started two years ago that a public official was shot apparently from afar, using a sniper’s rifle.

Yesterday’s ( July 2) killing in Tanauan City, Batangas of Mayor Antonio Halili breached the usual ways of assassination and used a method not seen or heard about in this country, anyway not since someone brushing his teeth at the window of his house was shot dead from afar by his political enemy.

In ‘narco’ list

Tanauan Mayor Halili, who was told by police in October 2016 to surrender because of his alleged link to illegal drugs, was shot while singing the national anthem at the City Hall’s Monday morning flag ceremony. The song was a few lines away from “ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo” before a shot rang out and the mayor fell. Shots that followed were presumably from the mayor’s bodyguards.

The shooter was apparently a sniper. A police official said the gunman used an M14, which used to be U.S. rifle until it was replaced by M16. M14, we are told, is also known as the competition rifle and the sniper’s rifle. A semi-automatic, with a bipod, has an effective range of 460 meters or 500 yards but its maximum range is 3,725 meters. It has 20 rounds but the sniper didn’t use more than two bullets. Sen. Ralph Recto was quoted as saying that snipers roam Batangas. That’s new to the rest of the country.

Why the drama

There are speculations why the mayor had to be shot at a public place, thus requiring the sniper fire. One is that the killers must have wanted to dramatize the assault: a public function, with officials and employees in attendance, a solemn ceremony, with the victim mouthing his patriotism and willingness to die for his country (“ang mamatay ng dahil sa iyo”).

They could’ve ambushed him elsewhere, in some remote, lonely barangay, or at a traffic chokepoint.

Or the assassins might have found it hard to kill the mayor under the usual methods employed in other situations.

Lately, the cops

Criticisms have seized on the fact that victims in the drug war were mostly the poor and the lowly. Lately, those taken down already include police officers.

Notably, last June 27, SPO1 Adonis Dumpit in Tagbilaran City and before him, two other cops, one of whom was killed in Lapu-Lapu City.

And now a city mayor, killed at a flag ceremony no less, as if to shame him for alleged “bogus” love of country.

Business of murder

Has the “internal cleansing” expanded to heads of local governments as well? Those who say Halili must have been killed for his alleged drug ties note that the mayor had been ostensibly active against illegal drugs by shaming drug pushers and addicts by publicly parading the suspects.

Whatever he was killed for -- his alleged drug trafficking, politics or revenge or passion -- the use of sniper fire to execute him adds a new dimension to the culture of impunity, which seems to have thrived in the past two years in this country.

Here in Cebu City, as if to lend continuity to the serial violence, lawyer Salvador Solima and his wife yesterday afternoon were shot dead inside their home in Guadalupe.

When they start quarreling and squeezing in each other’s anomalies, then I will believe the split is real.

CEBU CITY MAYOR TOMAS OSMENA, ON THE POSSIBILITY THAT BOTH FORMER MAYOR MICHAEL RAMA AND VICE MAYOR EDGARDO LABELLA WILL RUN FOR MAYOR IN 2016