Rising crimes alarm Gonzalez (Kape kag Isyu)

17 MARCH 2012 (ILOILO CITY, Philippines) -  Motor cycle riding men shot and injured broadcaster Fernando "Kapid" Gabio March 2 while he was washing his car front of his house at Jaro, Iloilo City. He was hit in the leg. He is luckier than his co-anchor in a previous air time, Neil "Lito" Jimena who was murdered August 22, 2011 in Negros Occidental -- by motorcycle riding assassins.

Evening of October 3, 2007, Police Officer 2 Frederick Capasao, assigned in the anti-drug campaign was murdered at his residence in Jaro, Iloilo City in front of his wife, also by gunmen on board a motorcycle and a van.

A year after him, another cop, Jomari Lamis, was driving home in Iloilo City November 1, 2010 on a motorcycle from his assignment in Guimaras Province, was chased by two men riding in tandem on a motorcycle and shot by the one at the back. He died while en route to the hospital.

August  30, 2011, real estate agent Richard Cesar was reading newspaper along a sidewalk in Iloilo City when two motorcycle riding men attacked him. He died instantly.

 Former congressman and justice secretary Raul Gonzalez, today's guest at "Kape kag Isyu" talk show bewailed that all the cases mentioned above had a pattern but they remain unsolved.

 

Gonzalez sniped at the administration of Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog for failure to secure its constituents. "Kun tan-awon mo city hall, damu didto goons nga gina-sweldohan," he said. "Diin ka kakita nga kunsehal lang, may isa ka dosena nga goons?" (If you look at city hall, there are goons employed there. Where else can you find that a mere councilor is tagging behind a dozen goons?"

Gonzalez further noted that one councilor has as bodyguard the controversial Police Officer 1 Rex Delos Reyes who was a suspect in the killings narrated above. "He was arrested in 2010 in Antique for robbery but he got reinstated in the service a year after," Gonzalez said. "I can't see the logic of it."

He was referring to Kgd. Plaridel Nava, an ally of Mayhor Jed Patrick Mabilog, who was the target of snide media commentaries by the injured  Gabio and the slain Jimena.

Kgd. Plaridel Nava could not be contacted as of this time for comment. Aside from Delos Reyes, Gonzalez also mentioned Gilbert "Ka Rambo" Monteverde, a former hitman of the rebel New People's Army (NPA) who acted as the councilor's bodyguard.

The councilor denied involvement in the killings. 

Neither  Nava nor his bodyguards were available for interview as of this writing.