ROSALES –Pangasinan 6th District Representative Conrado Estrella III had coffee with the late Basilan Representative Wahab Akbar just a couple of hours before his unexpected and violent death.

Estrella, in a telephone interview with The PUNCH, said he did not notice or feel any premonition during their conversation that Akbar would die that night from a bomb explosion outside the entrance lobby of the Batasang Pambansa complex in Quezon City Tuesday night.

The incident killed three others and seriously wounded at least ten others, including two other house representatives.

Estrella and Akbar were with Mt. Province Rep. Solomon Chungalao at the Congress lounge and their conversation revolved mostly around the election protest Akbar was facing.

Estrella, who himself had faced an election protest previously, gave Akbar some pointers on how to deal with the situation.

“I feel this is a reminder, a wake up call that we should all pray for our country,” he added.

 Meanwhile, 2nd District Rep. Victor Agbayani said in a text message to The PUNCH, “At this critical time, the police authorities cannot fail the Filipino people”.

“They should get to the bottom of this and not let this act of brazen lawlessness go unpunished,” Agbayani added.

CRUZ CONDEMNS

For his part, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz condemned the incident and tagged the perpetrators as people lacking in conscience and having a “good amount of inhumanity”.

Cruz, in an interview with The PUNCH, said those behind the crime “belong to a group of people who should not be members of civilized society.”

“They not only kill without remorse but they also kill people who are altogether innocent,” he said.

At the same time, Cruz warned against the hasty labeling of “terrorists” and called on the national government to “spend its intelligence fund well and not to fool around with it by applying   it for other payments or for other intentions”.#

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