NEWS RELEASE
March 1, 2010
Makabayan senatorial bet and Nacionalista Party guest candidate Satur Ocampo today expressed alarm over the brutal killing of Wilfredo Cimanis Mayor, a confessed “jueteng” operator from ALBAY who once tagged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s son, Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, two other congressmen and a former lawmaker of benefitting from jueteng in Pampanga.
Ocampo said that despite the lack of leads into the killing, it was difficult to discount the possibility was it politically motivated. He said that the fact that Mayor’s own family feared to give statements regarding who might be behind the killing was telling. He also said that the manner by which Mayor was executed – motorcycle-riding attackers, armed with an M16 assault rifle and a .45-caliber pistol shot Mayor before fleeing – was no different from the way political activists have been killed in the country since 2001.
“Mayor adds to the long list of victims of extrajudicial killings in the country, and tragically, the chances of his killers getting caught any time soon are very slim. As a whistleblower who went against big political names, however, the masterminds and perpetrators might well be just around the corner,” he said.
“The Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) may not need to look too far to find suspects. Mayor’s previous business dealings and his controversial expose linking members of the First family to jueteng may well be at the root of his murder.”
Ocampo extended his sympathy to Mayor’s family and expressed hope that they might find comfort in knowing that in one point in his life, Mayor did his country a great service by spilling the beans on the corruption of certain officials in government.
“Mayor put his life on the line when he spoke out and exposed the alleged involvement of members of the First Family in running jueteng operations. That certainly did not endear him to supporters of the First Family, much less to the very people he named. Nothing may have happened to the senate investigations wherein Mayor divulged everything he knew, but his testimony was not in vain: Filipinos became aware that the Macapagal-Arroyos had their fingers stuck in the jueteng pie and this added fuel to the protests against the incumbent regime,” Ocampo said.
Reference:
Vince Borneo, Media Relations Officer
Office of Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo
