Senate President Tito Sotto is right. There is no reason to panic over the spate of killings of local government officials in the past few days. Five killings in a week does not a lawless situation make as Senator and LP President Kiko Pangilinan would like people to believe.
Of course, we should condemn these killings and condole with the families of the victims. Of course, we should put the police on notice that the public is waiting for results as we urge them and their colleagues within the security establishment to solve these as soon as they can.
That is, investigate thoroughly and solve with believable evidence, not haphazard, raw ones which can only fuel more doubts about the ability of government to secure the peace.
More than that, we urge the police leadership to move more men in the streets and into the far alleys and byways of this country to deter any possible outbreak from happening. We urge them to use all available resources including the latest intelligence-gathering equipment no matter how meager these maybe to get the possible perpetrators of mayhem before these happen. We urge them to reassure our people that they are safe in their persons and in their homes.
With the police and our security forces on the ball, it is time our political leaders took a break from their headline-grabbing histrionics. This is not the time to issue all kinds of theories and speculations about the killings, for one, or issuing out hot-button releases about the state of our affairs as in Pangilinan’s “creating a climate of lawlessness.” Or in Justice Secretary Meynard Guevara’s order to the NBI to determine whether the killings were interrelated and had something to do with a supposed destabilization plot. The gentlemen may have been genuinely concerned over the situation but instead of calming the waters, so to speak, their acts and statements only fueled even more anxiety and caused many citizens sleepless nights.
In any event, I tend to believe PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde’s take that these killings are not systematic. They do not fit into a pattern and should be treated separately. “We are looking at different reasons,”
Albayalde mentioned when asked about earlier theories raised by the usual suspects that these killings may all be part of a grand conspiracy hatched by the Duterte administration to declare martial law.
As Albayalde noted the evidence gathered so far by the police does not lend credence to the martial law/state of emergency theory. The evidence point to varying reasons why these officials were killed ranging from business, politics and even personal grudges.
So, instead of losing sleep over the theories and speculations being tossed around, we urge our high officials to come down to earth and start working on the means to secure our people’s safety and their ability to make both ends meet given the extraordinary challenges they face.
I tend to believe reports that the giant telecoms duopoly of PLDT/Smart and Globe are moving heaven and earth to ensure that a third telco will never get off the ground. For one, the terms of reference (ToR) for the selection of the third player has been tossed back and forth with all kinds of revisions presumably coming from experts and concerned sectors but which DICT officials revealed were actually suggestions injected into the discussions within the technical working group involved in the vetting.
Then, there are the advisories coming from so-called experts and foreign operators insisting that the new player should shell out billions of pesos without as much as indicating why such a huge start-up fund (variously advised as from P10 billion to P36.7 billion and counting) is needed in the first place. The deluge of news feeds have been so loaded that some of the latest “reports” tend to discourage with, first, the subtle threat of inter connectivity difficulties and, second, imposition of almost impossible terms, a good number of which were never required of the two current players.
Having entered the picture, as it were, with surrogate expert statements and advisories from reputable institutions, local and foreign discussions within the technical working group slowed down if not stalled altogether.
The good news is that apparently Acting DICT Secretary Eliseo Rio has apparently gotten presidential approval to proceed with the selection process after almost stalled altogether on the matter of whether it will be via auction (mainly of frequencies and roll outs) as advocated by certain Cabinet members, notably Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez or through the highest committed level of service approach preferred by Secretary Rio and the DICT group. Well, the HCLos approach will now be used.
Unless, another scheme will be proferred by the giant telco duopoly and injected into the discussions Rio said we will have a third telco named by September. That is good news indeed in this telecommunications challenged country. We await the takeoff of this initiative.