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A top election official died a few hours after being
shot and wounded past noon on Monday by two men on motorcycles,
police said.
Wynne Asdala, a lawyer and acting
director of the Legal Department of the Commission on Elections (Comelec),
was attacked as he stepped out from a fast-food restaurant a few
meters away from the commission’s building in Intramuros, Manila.
“We condemn and deplore in the
strongest possible terms this cowardly and dastardly act,”
Commissioner Romeo Brawner, acting chairman of the poll agency, told
a press briefing.
Asdala had suffered a gunshot
wound in his right shoulder and was brought to Manila Doctors
Hospital on United Nations Avenue, also in Manila, police said.
Senior Police Officer 2 Renato
Garay of Station 5 (Ermita) of the Manila Police District said the
shooting happened around 12:40 p.m. on Andres Soriano Avenue and
Cabildo Street in Intramuros in front of Palacio del Gobernador,
just meters away from the Manila Cathedral.
Asdala and his stenographer Rena Ballo were leaving Subcourt
Restaurant when one of the attackers went near them and shot Asdala.
The gunmen escaped.
A radio report said Asdala was
brought to an operating room around 2 p.m.
Asdala was the assistant of
Alioden Dalaig, then Legal Department chief, who was killed four
months ago in an ambush November 10 last year as he came out of the
Casino Filipino, also in Ermita.
Police are conducting further investigation on whether the killing
of Asdala was related to that of Dalaig or to a case being handled
by Asdala’s wife, Quezon City Judge Fatima Asdala.
“We assure the family of [Asdala]
that we will have this case immediately investigated and leave no
stone unturned so that those who are behind this heinous crime will
be made to answer before the law,” Brawner said.
He admitted that some employees
of the poll agency, including Asdala, have been receiving death
threats. Brawner did not elaborate.
Asdala “was warned about the
threats against him and he was aware of them. So [we] are advising
our employees to be more careful,” he said.
Before the shooting, Brawner
said, Asdala was handling around 70 election-related cases,
including those he inherited from Dalaig.
 --Ruben
D. Manahan 4th And Anthony Vargas
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