Even as we commend the Police Regional Office in Central Visayas for arresting one of the suspects in the killing of Felicisimo Rupinta, chairman of Cebu City’s Barangay Ermita, we offer our sincere condolences to his family, colleagues and constituents.
Rupinta was ambushed in the night last week while he and his common-law wife were on their way home to Liloan town on Cebu’s northeast.
The perpetrators worked with precision, with initial findings showing that the trajectory of the bullets could have only been the handiwork of professional hitmen.
We wish the police well in rounding up three other suspects including, according to their report, the mastermind who apparently ordered Rupinta’s street-style execution in response to his unorthodox ways of governing.
Rupinta’s campaign against drugs of which labeling households under his jurisdiction “drug-free” may have raised eyebrows not only at the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) but among the dastardly who were negatively affected by Rupinta’s anti-narcotics crackdown.
That in no way whatsoever justifies the taking of his life. The ways of bloodlust have no place in a society like ours that claims to be humane and civilized.
We insist on protections for suspects or persons whose struggles with substance abuse put them at risk of liquidation. All the more should there be stringent security measures to shield those in the frontlines of enforcing the law, be they police personnel or barangay leaders.
Rupinta may have on many occasions tested the limits of power for a barangay chief — with intransigence in working with the Philippine Drug
Enforcement Agency or a hard line in dealing with vendors.
But he backed off when shown he could go no farther as in his suspension by the Ombudsman or in the face of the CHR’s objections to his propaganda approach to addressing the narcotics epidemic in his area.
These and more will be remembered by those who are close to Rupinta, especially in his political party and in his own barangay as they accompany his remains and bring them to a final resting place.
Meanwhile, it is up to the police, the judiciary and City Hall to do what must be done — starting with the arrest of everyone involved in Rupinta’s killing and the continuation of the advocacies he stood for — to bring back the light that should return to his now darkened office.