Speaker on publisher’s slay: Don’t look at me

TAGUM CITY — Feeling alluded to, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez declared that he had nothing to do with the June 7 murder of newspaper publisher Dennis Denora in Panabo City.

“I don’t kill people, I file cases,” Alvarez told reporters on the sidelines of Tuesday’s Independence Day celebration here.

He said he sued Denora, 67, publisher of the Davao del Norte-based weekly, Trends and Time, for libel but was prevailed upon by Tagum City Mayor Rey Uy, his and Denora’s mutual friend, to drop the case.

Unfair

Alvarez did not say where the insinuations linking him to Denora’s killing came from but he urged authorities to investigate the murder case.

Denora was attacked by two men on a motorcycle while his car was stuck in traffic at Barangay New Pandan in Panabo past 1 p.m. on June 7. His driver, Manolito Rivera, survived the attack.

Alvarez said he had just returned from abroad and it was unfair for his name to be dragged into the killing.

“It’s not my nature to senselessly kill people,” he said.

‘Work-related’

Senior Supt. Alan Manibog, Davao del Norte provincial police chief, said investigators were looking into the possibility that Denora’s murder was “work-related.”

Police created Task Force Denora on Monday to help solve the third media killing in Davao del Norte in the last five years.

Manibog, however, declined to comment on the statement made by Communications Undersecretary Joel Egco, head of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security, that a “very influential politician” could be behind Denora’s killing.

Manibog said Panabo City Mayor James Gamao has put up a P100,000 bounty for Denora’s killers while the publisher’s friends pooled another P200,000 reward. — FRINSTON LIM