AFTER HIRED KILLER’S ARREST

LINGAYEN—Following the arrest last week of the lone gunman in the slaying of the former vice mayor here and his wife in March 2012, the victim’s family expressed hope that the mastermind will soon be identified and charged in court.

Sual Mayor Roberto Arcinue, brother of slain former vice mayor Ramon Arcinue and his wife, Zorahayda, herself a former barangay chairman, said he is optimistic the arrest of Otto Guialaludin, a hired killer known as Boy Muslim from Cotabato City, will lead to real justice by finding who ordered the shooting.

Nonetheless, the mayor, elder brother of Ramon, said the Arcinue family is thankful to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) who made the arrest on Wednesday as well as to Justice Secretary Leila de Lima for pursuing the case.

Two of the slain couple’s children and two other motorcycle drivers were witnesses to the killing and have positively identified Guialaludin.

“NBI agents are good so I am hopeful they would press Guialaludin to identify the mastermind… Without Secretary de Lima, this case would have already died,” Arcinue said.

“I hope Guialaludin would confess the truth and tell who ordered and paid him to kill the couple,” he added.

When asked on what they suspect to be the motive for the killing, Arcinue said: “It’s in the papers and I believe it was politics.”

Judge Marcelino Sayo Jr. of the Regional Trial Court, National Capital Judicial Region branch 45 in Manila, issued the arrest warrant against Guialaludin for the double murder case.

The mayor said the Arcinue family is ready to pay the P250,000 reward for the arrest of the suspect.

The municipal government of Lingayen led by then Mayor Jonas Castaneda, Gov. Amado Espino Jr. and the provincial board of Pangasinan also earlier offered an additional reward of P250,000 each.

The victims were first wounded in an ambush in Binmaley town in March 2011 but survived. A case was filed against the suspect but the prosecutor in charge dismissed the case for being weak.

“Imagine that. The victims themselves were the ones who identified the gunman but the case was dismissed. So good thing, Secretary De Lima intervened and reversed that decision by a prosecutor,” Arcinue narrated.

But before De Lima’s decision was released, the couple was gunned down in Manila in March 2012, almost a year after they survived their first ambush.

“Why? My theory is because Ramon and Zor were vital witnesses so if they would be gunned down, there would be no more witness,” the Sual mayor said.

“There is justice in the Philippines although slow,” Arcinue said.—Eva Visperas

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