Was it ‘police operation’ that cost Del’s life?

By Herbert Vego

 

IF proven guilty of shooting an innocent to death, the accused police officers would somehow bolster the prevailing notion that the Philippine National Police (PNP) is “licensed” to kill suspected drug pushers and users.

This is not to say that the late Delfin “Del” Britanico – son of former Congressman Buddy Britanico — was a target of extra-judicial killing; somebody else was. But the culprits must have panicked, thinking that he had seen them shoot to death drug surrenderer Alain Muller.

Muller was gunned down on a Sunday noon (January 19, 2020) in front of his house on Cuartero Street (Jaro, Iloilo City),

A few minutes later, Del fell dead, too, while seated on his parked motorcycle. He had just taken pictures of a Mitsubishi Adventure van that had stopped at an intersection along the Iloilo River Boulevard (Barangay Nabitasan, Lapaz) to allow its occupants to rip off decal stickers on its sides. The decals could have served as a decoy to temporarily “mask” the vehicle used in an earlier crime.

To make the long one-year-old story short, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has reached the theory that Britanico’s murder was meant to cover up police participation in the “salvaging” of Muller.

The NBI and the Britanicos had convinced the driver of the van, PNP Corporal Joseph Andrew Poneles Joven, to stand as a state witness.

The NBI and the Britanico family have filed a case for murder and theft against the pinpointed cops at the Department of Justice in Manila.

In his sworn statement, Joven pinpointed at Police Staff Sergeant Ricardo Cabrera Morante and Police Master Sergeant Vernie Lui Escorial as the gunmen who shot Delfin dead. He named three other van occupants — namely Sergeant Michael Demegillo de Felipe, Staff Sergeant Freddie Hibalo Libo-on and Corporal Jerry Villanueva.

Delfin’s cellphone was missing, indicating that his killers had seen him take incriminating pictures of them.

“The testimony of Joven has the badge of truth because it is an admission against his interest,” said former Congressman Britanico, Del’s dad ang practicing lawyer, in a radio interview. “Justice is rolling.”

On the other hand, the family of Alain Muller – themselves getting death threats — would rather not pursue a murder case against the same suspects who are widely believed to have killed him ahead of Del.

But certainly, a “rolling justice” for Del would roll for Alain as well.

 

‘NO POWER’ BLAMED ON MORE POWER

“We understand them,” says MORE Power President Roel Z. Castro whenever customers wail over brownouts that unmake their days and nights.

This was the situation some residents of Iloilo found themselves in last Friday. More often than not, they would blame “lousy service” for power outages.

On the aforementioned day, the MORE management could not have kept electricity running in the affected area even if they wanted to. It was caused by an accident involving a vehicle that rammed against a guy wire on the corner of Circumferential Road 1 and Tacas Road. The broken wire swung and brushed against phase conductors of a 69-kV sub-transmission line, thus tripping off a circuit breaker belonging to energy producer Panay Power Corp. (PPC).

Guy wires, incidentally, refer to thick cables fastening the poles to the ground for stability.

The above incident is an example of unscheduled power outage – so-called because it results from accidents, natural disasters or sabotage.

The other kind is scheduled power outage.  Here, the distribution utility announces in advance on radio or Facebook page the day/night and time to shut off power in certain areas within an hour or more while minor or major repairs or installations are being made to rehabilitate obsolete and damaged facilities.

Such “birth pain” is understandable. MORE Power is barely 11 months playing its role as the new distribution utility in Iloilo City. It started taking over from Panay Electric Company on February 29, 2020.