Senators decry rising wave of killings in PH

The Philippine National Police should work harder on law enforcement after a series of killings gave the Philippines a “black eye” before the international community, senators said on Friday.

Senators mentioned only four specific crimes during the chamber’s consideration of the PNP’s proposed budget for 2024, but they decried that the incidents were enough to give the country a really embarrassing shiner before the global community.

“These homicide incidents are the worst. They’re giving us a black eye in the international community,” Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said at the resumption of the Senate’s deliberations on the PNP’s P197.7-billion budget.

Zubiri said officials of some European countries messaged him after they saw the gruesome murder of broadcaster Juan Jumalon, who was gunned down while his popular radio program was being livestreamed inside his house in Calamba, Misamis Occidental.

“They [asked] me, ‘What’s going on there? Why are you killing your media personalities?’” he said. “Unfortunately, it was shown live. So that will always be in the internet.”

Affront to the PNP

Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva echoed the concerns of his colleagues, reminding the PNP that it should take these violent incidents more seriously.

“We need to [act on] these seriously,” Villanueva said. “Let’s show the world that we condemn these acts and we are not going to tolerate such [criminal] actions.”

Even Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, who was defending the PNP’s budget, said PNP chief Gen. Benjamin Acorda Jr. agreed that the recent criminal incidents were an affront to the 144,000-strong force.

Killing inside bus

Angara noted that while major crimes, such robbery and car theft, actually went down from January to October this year as compared to the same period in 2022, homicide cases actually increased from 851 to 907 during the period.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III raised the still unsolved disappearance of a beauty contestant in Batangas, which supposedly involves a police official and those of several cockfighting aficionados, which the Senate blue ribbon committee investigated.

Pimentel also raised the killing of an elderly couple inside a passenger bus in Carranglan, Nueva Ecija.

“The killing inside the passenger bus happened while the gun ban was still in effect. But the gunmen were not afraid,” he said.

Thus far, none of the incidents raised have been solved and other government agencies have taken secondary steps to at least show that something was being done.

On Friday, the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) ordered the bus carrier Victory Liner Inc. to explain why its certificate of public convenience should not be revoked following the killing of the elderly couple.

The LTFRB ordered Victory Liner to appear before the board on Nov. 21 to refute its supposed “failure to provide safe, adequate, comfortable and dependable land public transportation.”

In a radio interview on Friday, Victory Liner corporate communications officer Ricky Rivera said they would implement remedial measures ordered by the Department of Transportation and the PNP.