ILOILO CITY—A year after the death of Fernando Baldomero, the first political activist murdered under the Aquino administration, his family and colleagues are still crying for justice.
At least 200 activists and Baldomero’s family members and friends joined a protest rally in the capital town of Kalibo in Aklan on Tuesday to mark the first year of his unsolved murder.
“We fear that my father’s death will just become among the thousands of unsolved killings of activists,” Baldomero’s son, Ernan, said in a phone interview.
Ernan said the case hasn’t moved and there’s been no progress, either, in the investigation of a grenade attack on his father’s ancestral house months before Baldomero was gunned down.
A lone gunman shot dead Baldomero in front of his house in Kalibo on July 5, 2010. The gunman fled on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice.
Fernando, 61, provincial chair of the party-list group Bayan Muna and reelected Lezo town councilor, died of multiple bullet wounds. A Liberal Party member, Baldomero died just four days after he assumed his second term of office.
Police filed a murder complaint against Dindo Lovon Ancero, the alleged gunman, and several other unidentified suspects at the Aklan Provincial Prosecutor’s Office on Aug. 2 last year.
The Aklan Provincial Prosecutor’s Office issued a resolution indicting Ancero in October last year.
But Senior Supt. Cornelio Defensor, Aklan police director, said a warrant has yet to be issued for the arrest of Ancero.
Defensor said the court hasn’t issued the warrant. Virgilo Garcia, assistant regional state prosecutor, said the Kalibo Regional Trial Court issued a warrant of arrest for a Dindo Lovon Ancero on Jan. 11 but it hasn’t been served.