‘PUP officials were sent death threats’

Death threats were received by school officials of  Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), whose vice president was killed by a still unidentified assailant on Wednesday, according to a member of its board of regents.

The threats, in the form of text messages, were sent  at the height of a controversy hounding the  PUP presidency last month.

Ironically, the slain victim, PUP vice president for administration and concurrent board secretary Augustus Cezar,  was not a recipient of the death threats.

Cezar was shot in the head  by an unidentified man riding on a motorcycle as was driving   his van along Sta. Mesa, Manila, on his way home.

Manila Police District (MPD) investigators said they are zeroing in on the last three days before the murder, describing the period as “crucial” to the solution of the case.

At the  wake for Cezar  yesterday afternoon held at the PUP Interfaith Chapel, student regent Rommel Aguilar told the Inquirer that the recipients of the death threats had agreed to keep the details among  themselves in order not to alarm the school  community.

“We concluded that the  threats were meant to terrorize us and maybe to sow terror in the  school so we opted to keep it under wraps,” he  added.

Asked if Cezar was one of the recipients, Aguilar said: “Most of the other members received a death threat, but not him (Cezar).”

Power struggle

He said  the people behind the threats could have been involved in a “power struggle”  related to the jockeying for the position of  president of the university.

Dante Guevara sits as PUP president in a holdover capacity pending the selection of a new president.

Aguilar said they are pushing for  the immediate creation of a search committee for the PUP presidency, to avoid more acts of  violence.

When the white coffin bearing the remains of the slain PUP official was carried late Thursday afternoon inside the chapel, students and faculty watched with mixed feelings of regret for the passing of a teacher they described as “kind and jolly” and fear that the violent incident would not end with Cezar’s death.

“It was so brutal. I could never imagine someone would be capable of killing him. He is highly respected,”  Jannica Viloria, 18, a third year student.

The university declared yesterday as “black and white Friday” to mourn the death of   the school official, and enjoined all members of the academe and staff to wear black or white, the color symbolizing their call for justice.

At around 1:30 p.m., Vice President Jejomar Binay arrived and  offered his condolences to the victim’s  family, relatives, colleagues and the entire PUP community.

Tension

In a statement, Binay condemned the killing, saying that it would add to the tension in PUP triggered by the leadership row.  Binay used to teach in the university when it was still the known as the  Philippine College of Commerce.

“Universities are institutions for learning. They should be insulated from any form of violence,” he stressed, adding that he hoped the  police would look deeper into the motives behind the killing.

MPD homicide section head Senior Insp. Joselito de Ocampo told the Inquirer that they are checking details in the last three days before Cezar was killed, particularly when the school official was appointed executive director of all PUP campuses on Oct. 10. The order was revoked on Oct. 11, the eve of his murder.

“But we have not ruled out other possible motives,” De Ocampo said.

Cezar had also been appointed chair of the bids and contracts committee, which  could also have made him a target, he added.

The National Bureau of Investigation Death Investigation Division has started conducting a parallel investigation into  the  killing.