Press Release
November 12, 2007

STATEMENT OF SEN. GORDON ON THE KILLING OF COMELEC LAW DEP'T OFFICIAL DALAIG

Shocking as it appears to be, the gangland style killing of Commission on Elections legal department chief Alioden Dalabia Dalaig in Ermita, Manila, on Saturday night (November 10, 2007) is just but one of the many election related violent deaths we have come to witness over the course of nearly two decades.

Dalaig was apparently shot through the heart and killed by a lone gunman as he walked across the Hyatt Hotel parking lot. In his possession was P300,000 in cash. This certainly raises a lot of questions and one question I've heard was: Is there a mafia operating in Comelec?

The public outcry that will be seen and heard in the media will be for a speedy and credible investigation which hopefully will terminate in the prosecution and imprisonment of the killer as well as the mastermind.

For our country's sake, we demand that an investigation be immediately conducted and our people be told what really happened. We need to find out what controversial or sensitive cases Dalaig was handling. In light of Dalaig's killing, is law enforcement still certain that the recent killing of Comelec's Bacoor office head Joseph Del Rosario was not related to his work? How many of our election officials have been killed and what were the circumstances surrounding their killings?

We had hoped that Automated Elections Law would finally put a stop to election related killings. Hardly anyone raised a whimper when elections were not automated in May and then again in October this year. We don't know if the Automated Elections law can still be implemented, but we will certainly insist that it gets implemented in 2010 if only to avoid more killings and yet another Presidency assailed with allegations of wholesale electoral fraud.

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