The Pen Speaks
Danny O. Sagun

WE could feel the anguish and frustration of a widow who, two months after the murder of her husband, has yet to se the wheels of justice grind.

Mrs. Eden Aquino, her only child Sheila, and sister-in-law Verna, surprisingly showed up at our office last Monday afternoon apparently to seek the help of the media in bringing to justice the killer/s and the mastermind.

Eden and Sheila were in black, the traditional color for mourning, possibly a lifetime grief, unless the assassin who is reportedly freely roaming around under the protective wings of an influential government official, is finally caught and made to answer for his crime.

We met the slain vice-mayor, Adolfo [Podong to his friends] Aquino, 10 years ago as a private person then, while we were manning the press center at VMU in San Carlos City of the 1995 Palarong Pambansa. He was assisting the DECS region IV director in the latter’s quest to get a fair media coverage as attention was then being lavished, unfairly, he believed, on the NCR delegation. Friendly, amiable, and supportive — traits we instantly noted in him as he approached us to request for a media group to attend a press con with the director, his wife’s boss at the regional office.

We did not see him after that national sports meet until eight years later in 2003 when he was already a vice-mayor. Mapandan was preparing for the presidential visit in time for the town festival. Podong hadn’t changed at all; he was practically still the same fellow we had seen the first time.

Sheila, who was forced to take a leave from her work in Australia, got her father’s looks. We instantly noticed her papa’s smile on her face.
Up to now, there seems to be no end to the family’s anguish. They fear the case may just turn up to be another unsolved political killing just like the other incidents in the past. Remember just-elected Mayor Angelito Nava of Aguilar who was gunned down while taking his regular morning jog a few meters from his house? Mayor Jose Peralta of Balungao too who was pumped full of lead by a killer while hearing mass at the town Catholic church. And who would forget what happened to the crusading vice mayor Bato of Bani, the tough hombre and ex-mayor Connie Rodrigo of San Nicolas and Tayug’s Mayor Guerra Zaragoza. Did we miss some others? Were those cases ever solved?

Eden was not giving up despite the odds, the threats she receives on her phone, and the fact that she is practically working alone. She has not abandoned her belief that politics had something to do with Podong’s murder. Ironically, she intimated to us, she could not just freely announce to the world possible suspects while others, even children, she said, innocently recite who they are.

We could only wish she gets the justice she deserves, the very justice promised her and the public by PNP Chief Arturo Lomibao, a provincemate, no less, who quickly went to Mapandan morning after the vice-mayor’s killing to condole and vow thorough investigation of the case.

We wonder: Are police task force investigations on killings of political figures meant to be like the line in the classical Mona Lisa song – “they just lie there, and they die there?”