Aklan town councilor faces murder raps

By Nestor P. Burgos Jr.
PXI Visayas Bureau
ILOILO CITY, Philippines -- Police have charged a town councilor in Aklan with last month's killing of a farmer in Tubungan town in Iloilo.
The Tubungan police included Lezo town councilor and Bayan Muna provincial chairman Fernando Baldomero, 58, in the murder complaint filed before the Iloilo Provincial Prosecutors Office last July 23 for the killing of Arturo Tagudinay.
Inspector Efren Niembra Tubungan, police chief, accused Baldomero and 13 other respondents for shooting and killing Tagudinay around 10:30 a.m. on July 11 at Lupao Creek in sitio (sub-village) Ila-Ila in Barangay (village) Igdampog Sur in Tubungan, Iloilo, around 41 kilometers south of here.
But Baldomero denied the accusation. "How can I be an NPA [New People's Army] member and be part of attacks in Tubungan when I'm busy here with my work as a town councilor?" Baldomero asked in a telephone interview.
Baldomero said this was the second time in barely two years that he has been implicated in attacks of the NPA.
"This is plain harassment especially because of my position as provincial chair of Bayan Muna," he said.
Baldomero, a former political detainee, was arrested in 2005 when he was also included in a criminal complaint for the August 2004 ambush and killing of a policeman and soldiers in San Remigio town, Antique.
He was also accused of being involved in the burning of equipment worth P15 million at a field office of construction firm E.C. de Luna Construction Corp. in Barangay Patricion in Guimbal, 29 km south of Iloilo City, days before the May 11, 2004 elections.
He was released from detention on December 2005 after the courts dismissed the cases against him for lack of evidence.
Baldomero said he has been living in his hometown in Lezo since 1993 and has even become a barangay councilor of his village Sta. Cruz Biga-a since 1997.
"This is part of the campaign to harass leaders of militant groups by implicating us in attacks of the NPA," said Baldomero.
The other respondents in Tagudinay's killing include Ariston Remus, Camlon Sabares, alias Ka Alan; Nahum Camariosa, alias Ka Bebong; and 10 unidentified suspects allegedly belonging to the NPA’s Napoleon Tumagtang Command.
The NPA command, through its spokesman Ariston Remus, had claimed responsibility for the killing of Tagudinay. The rebel command is under the Southern Front Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines and operates in southern Iloilo and parts of Antique province.
Remus had accused Tagudinay of alleged various abuses against residents of hinterland villages of Tubungan, including the stealing and destroying of crops.
Military officials, however, had claimed that Tagudinay was killed because he refused to give in to the rebels' demands to give palay (rice) regularly.