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By Jeannette I. Andrade, Reporter
The mayor of Daram town in Samar
was assassinated Thursday in a predawn attack, making him the first
victim of election-related violence at the onset of the campaign
period.
Reports reaching the Philippine
National Police (PNP) headquarters in Camp Crame identified the
victim as Mayor Benito Bucatcat Astorga, who was killed by a lone
gunman at a village dance about 2 a.m.
Astorga was celebrating a fiesta
with constituents of Barangay Birawan, a remote village of Daram,
when the assassin shot him with a .45-caliber pistol.
The mayor sustained five bullet
wounds in different parts of the body. He died while being brought
to the Saint Paul’s Hospital in Tacloban City, Leyte, aboard a
motorboat.
The suspect was able to flee,
losing his pursuers in a crowd. Investigation recovered five spent
.45-caliber pistol shells at the site.
In a related development, the PNP
officials admitted the antijueteng campaign is in limbo due to the
dissolution of the Anti-Illegal Gambling Special Operations Task
Force (AIG-SOTF).
The national police leadership
has also failed to issue clear directives to units nationwide on the
issue of illegal gambling.
The AIG-SOTF used to be
supervised by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.
At a press conference, CIDG
Director Edgardo Doromal claimed that anti-illegal gambling chores
have been removed from his unit’s order of priority since last
year, the reason why there has been an apparent lull in antijueteng
operations.
Doromal admitted, “As far as we
know, jueteng is still alive.”
The CIDG chief said that jueteng
operators are back in the business of conducting guerrilla-type
operations.
“Sa remote areas ginagawa ang
operation. Sa laylayan, [Jueteng operations are being conducted in
the remote areas. At the outskirts],” he said.
Asked if the PNP chief has given
a directive for intensified antijueteng operations, he responded,
“I have to review kung may standing order.”
Included in the review, Doromal
said, would be determining under which unit the supervision of the
AID-SOTG has been passed to.
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