COTABATO CITY — Businesses, schools and medical clinics shut down operations Friday and turned this city of 270,000 people into a virtual ghost town, in a show of outrage at last week’s bombing near Cotabato’s Roman Catholic cathedral.

Organizers said their joint action was not an act of sabotage or intended to embarrass the city government but merely their way of condemning the bomb attack that killed eight people and wounded more than 50.

Even roadside eatery owners joined in the protest.

The decision to close shop for a day was a consensus among businessmen, said Oscar Tan Abing, president of the Cotabato Grocers Association.

Dr. Johnny Rabago, adviser for Mindanao of the Philippine Medical Association, said private clinics and hospitals were also closed. But emergency cases will still be treated, he said.

“The emergency room will remain open 24/7,” Rabago told the Inquirer.

“It was an expression of condemnation and was not meant to ridicule the local government. Please, don’t take this as an offense,” said Yu Beng Chua, president of the Cotabato Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Mayor Muslimin Sema sounded piqued when he told Radio dxMS he did not care if the businessmen shut down their establishments.

“They want to close shop, go ahead,” he said.

The protest was sparked by last Sunday’s bomb blast near the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and similar attacks in Iligan City and Jolo town in Sulu province.

Fr. Eduardo Tanudtanod, president of the Notre Dame University, said the daylong action was “not an economic sabotage, but a sacrifice to show solidarity with the victims.”

He said this was the people’s way of showing their desire “to end hostilities, where most of the victims were the young, [including] students and the innocents.”

Probe hits wall

The investigation of the July 5 explosion has run into a wall. Two suspects questioned earlier were found innocent and have been released, police said.

Senior Supt. Willie Dangane, city police director, said the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) was preparing the sketch of a possible suspect based on an image captured by a closed-circuit TV camera mounted near the blast scene.

Once the sketch was made public, “it would be easy to uncover his identity,” Dangane said.

The city government has set up a P1-million reward for the bomber’s arrest.

Quevedo appeal

In a pastoral statement read by a priest during the “Mass of Mourning and for Peace” at the bomb-shaken cathedral, Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo urged authorities to speed up their investigation.

“I urgently appeal to all our authorities, local, regional and national, to expedite the identification, arrest and detention of the perpetrators. I ask for the full force of the law to be applied,” said Quevedo, former president of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

Quevedo, who was attending the annual CBCP conference in Tagaytay City, appealed to the public to refrain from making “unfounded speculation to gain political and ideological leverage.”

“Exploiting the tragedy and the grief of families ... is certainly insensitive and irresponsible,” he said of reports that the bombings could be an off-shoot of Muslim-Christian conflict.

In mosques, Muslim religious preachers (Ulama) denounced the bombing and terrorism, according to Ustadz Mike Ibrahim, president of the National Ulama Conference of the Philippines.

The condemnation from Christian and Muslim sectors was expected, Tanudtanod said, adding: “We have to jointly act because bombs do not choose their targets.”

In Jolo, Sulu, families of the victims of Tuesday’s explosion, which killed two people and wounded 27, asked the authorities to immediately arrest those responsible for the bombing.

Sulu Representatives Yusop Jikiri and Munir Arbison, along with several mayors, demanded an independent probe.

Vendor at NBI

In Iligan, where a separate blast on Tuesday wounded nine people, a man seen on a CCTV camera carrying a box shortly before the explosion went to the NBI to clear his name.

Ysmael Hapi Jr. said he was an ambulant vendor and the box contained his wares, NBI Iligan office chief Eric Destor said.

“My neighbors told me I was the man on TV,” Destor quoted the man as saying. Charlie Señase, Edwin Fernandez, Ed General and Richel Umel, Inquirer Mindanao