Manila Deplores Unsolved Slayings : Lawmakers Demand Overhaul of Law-Enforcement Units

MANILA —  Key Philippine legislators on Monday demanded a total revamping of the nation’s military and law-enforcement agencies after the weekend assassination of Cabinet minister Jaime Ferrer, the latest in a series of unsolved killings of prominent Filipinos that includes the 1983 assassination of President Corazon Aquino’s husband.

Police said Monday that they have no new leads or suspects in the Sunday night ambush-slaying of Local Government Secretary Ferrer, an outspoken anti-Communist who ranked among Aquino’s most powerful Cabinet members. And leaders of Aquino’s political party began clamoring for justice.

“The law enforcement agencies have been very lax and have proven to be a failure,” declared newly elected Congressman Francisco Sumulong, a key ruling party member of the House of Representatives and Aquino’s cousin.

Referring to the still-unsolved Aug. 21, 1983, killing of the president’s husband, former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., Sumulong added: “Up to now this has remained unresolved, and there are so many other killings, important personalities in and out of the government, which have not been solved.

“We should have a reorganization of the whole law-enforcement agency set-up so that it will become more effective in maintaining peace and order.”

For most of the government officials who spoke out Monday, Ferrer’s killing became an instant symbol not only of the decaying law-and-order situation in Manila, where violent street crime is up 24% this year, but also of a nationwide trend toward anarchy in the 17 months since Aquino took power from Ferdinand E. Marcos amid a popularly backed military revolt.

“Right now, there is no control, no supervision over the police, or anyone for that matter, by the local executives,” declared Antonio Cuenco, president pro tem of the House of Representatives and a former Aquino cabinet member.

“And the situation within the police departments is so bad, the policemen don’t even have typewriters to write down the crimes, so even when the criminals are caught, they just walk away.”

Sumulong added, “Right now in the Philippines, it is a well-known fact that our judicial system is so defective that it takes a long time before anyone gets tried and convicted and finally sent to jail.”

Aquino herself made no further public comment Monday on the killing of her trusted Cabinet aide. Ferrer was shot eight times in the head, neck and chest by at least four unidentified assailants as he returned to his Manila home from a Sunday evening Mass.

Extremists Blamed

In the past, after nearly half a dozen celebrated assassination attempts, torture killings and massacres informally blamed on armed extremists of either the political left or right, Aquino has demanded speedy justice. But in none of those cases have there been any convictions, and in most of them, there have been no arrests.

Last November, when labor leader Rolando Olalia was kidnaped, tortured and murdered, Aquino loudly condemned the “ruthless slaying,” formed a high-level investigative commission. “I want to see justice done,” she demanded then in a nationally televised press conference.

Today, nine months later, police have arrested only two suspects in the case, both military men. A trial was called off on technical grounds soon after it began in January. Both soldiers remain in the service.

In March, after a time-bomb exploded in the Philippine Military Academy grandstand where Aquino was due to deliver a speech four days later, an attack that Aquino herself called “the greatest threat to my life,” the president ordered a thorough investigation.

The blast, which occurred during a graduation rehearsal, left four dead and 43 injured, and Aquino called it “a dastardly act of cowardice,” vowing, “we will find the perpetrators.”

Initially, military investigators speculated that the Communist New People’s Army was behind the bombing. Several days later, though, they arrested an army colonel, speculating it was an inside job by disgruntled soldiers. Finally, the colonel was released for lack of evidence.

Another celebrated crime that has directly hurt the Philippine economy, the November kidnaping of Japanese businessman Noboyuki Wakaoji, also remains unsolved. The businessman was released after four months of captivity, but only after his company paid an undisclosed ransom, reckoned by Philippine authorities to have been $2 million.

Just two months ago, leftist leader Bernabe Buscayno was injured by ambushers in Manila, and again Aquino vowed swift justice, adding that she directed military authorities to launch a campaign to track down the estimated 100,000 unlicensed firearms in the country.

No arrests have been made in the case, and the military officials calculate that the number of illegal firearms remains the same.

In each case, Aquino assured the victims’ survivors that she, herself deprived of a loved one by violence, understood their pain.

But, as in all of the more recent cases, the murder of Aquino’s husband, remains unsolved. Despite an exhaustive investigation and subsequent trial under the Marcos regime, the military suspects charged with Benigno Aquino’s killing have not been convicted, and a continuing retrial of the case is not expected to be over until the end of the year.

There is a far-reaching plan, according to Sumulong and several other influential members of the new Congress, to remove the nation’s police agencies from the control of the military. The armed forces have been in charge of all police matters since September, 1972, when Marcos declared martial law.

The nation’s new constitution, approved by the voters Feb. 2, requires that the police be placed under the control of the country’s civilian mayors and governors, who will be elected in local elections Nov. 9. But Congress is empowered to set the schedule for that turnover of power.

Given the sentiment in Congress on Monday after Ferrer’s killing, that transition will come sooner rather than later. “Unless we do something now about the numerous unsolved crimes,” Sumulong concluded, “there will really be no deterrent.”