Wild, Wild North

EDITORIAL

Even before the election season started, killings related to politics have been on the rise in northern Luzon. Now that the countdown to the May election started, expect more killings particularly in the Ilocos Region where police have documented a lot of election-related violence like murders perpetrated by hired assassins.

It is a known fact that every election season, northern Luzon is known as the Wild, Wild North (composed of the Ilocos, Cordillera and Cagayan Valley regions) due to violence instigated by politicians or their supporters, the latest of which were the Agoo shooting incident and slay of a barangay captain in Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur. (See page 1 for details.)

Over the years, nothing much changed in eradicating the culture of violence that plagues not only these areas but the entire country. And it is a sad fact that most instigators of violence are the rich and powerful – often holding sensitive and influential positions in government.

If the ones in top positions of government are the ones being accused of being masterminds in snuffing out lives of innocent civilians, what more can we expect from an administration (or administrations) which have been involved in human rights violations to stop these killings?

Now, even journalists, judges, human rights workers, members of non-government

organizations, lawyers among others are not exempt from being victims of HRVs, the latest of which was the massacre of around 30 journalists in Maguindanao allegedly by members of the Ampatuan clan and their supporters which included police.

It is a damn if you do damn if you don’t situation and the least that we can expect for now is to elect a good president who will champion the cause of human rights and the rest will hopefully follow.