Experts should decide on security aides for LCEs

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – A municipal mayor in Negros Occidental said experts should determine the security detail for local chief executives (LCEs) amid threats highlighted anew by the recent assassination of Negros Oriental Governor Roel Degamo.

Moises Padilla Mayor Ella Celestina D. Garcia-Yulo said “it would really depend on what threats you are facing as well as the area you’re in.”

Yulo cited for instance her town which is located in central Negros with most of the barangays situated in the upland areas still affected by insurgency.

“It would really be determined by security experts like the Philippine National Police how many security details we need,” the mayor further said.

She pointed out that there are threats that can be considered personal, and there are also threats posed by New People’s Army rebels, “you wouldn’t know them because they can be civilians, that would entail a different security set- up.”

Yulo said the threat she is still concerned about dates back to 2019,  four years after she survived an ambush during that year’s elections.

“Our family has yet to attain justice,” she lamented.

While Yulo, then vice mayor of Moises Padilla, survived the attempt on her life, her brother, Mark, and nephew, Michael, did not make it after their convoy was fired upon by a group of armed men on April 25, 2019.

She was running for mayor then against her uncle, Atty. Magdaleno Peña, the incumbent chief executive.

Yulo said the threats against her life remain, noting that the perpetrators remain at large.

But the mayor neither confirmed nor denied if she was the one referred to by the Police Regional Office 6, as the lone local chief executive in Negros Occidental with death threats.

Despite the assurance and order of then President Rodrigo Duterte to arrest all the suspects, Yulo lamented that they have yet to be all accounted for.

“So the threat is still there, including those from policemen who were dismissed from service,” she further said.

Earlier, the Philippine National Police has been instructed by the Department of Interior and Local Government to conduct threat assessments on all local chief executives (LCEs), following the assassination of Degamo and other LCEs all over the country.

There are now proposals to institutionalize the granting of a security package to elected government officials (EGOs).

Yulo, who is on her second term, remains unfazed by threats to her life.

“If I will always think of it, wala ko mahimo sa pangabuhi ko (I won’t be able to do anything with my life), as a mayor also,” she said.

She further said, “I have to do my job as local chief executive and ensure that my constituents avail of government service despite the threats that come with it.”