Arroyo orders probe of Rabaya slay

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Sunday ordered authorities to solve immediately the killing of Quezon province congressional candidate Vicente Rabaya Jr. Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said a special team had already been formed to look into the death of Rabaya, whose body was found inside an abandoned vehicle in Quezon City. Bunye said the President sent her sympathies to the family of Rabaya, a member of the Nationalist People’s Coalition, and assures them that a relentless manhunt for the perpetrators would be launched. “This kind of violence shows that much is yet to be done to reform our political culture, which is one of the platform issues of the administration. While speedy criminal justice is the best means to show that we mean business, we must also modernize our democratic institutions and values, cut fraud and tone down the heat of power play at all levels," he said. Bunye said the President also directed the Philippine National Police to intensify its police visibility, the deployment of mobile checkpoints to interdict loose guns and to muster total community participation “to bear down on electoral violence." He said Mrs Arroyo wants to make sure that political stability would be as “straight and steady as our economic stability." “The government will apply the full force of the law against all groups and individuals employing threat and intimidation to undermine suffrage and free choice," he added. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said authorities must immediately attend to Rabaya’s killings as they do not want this incident to set a trend of election–related violence in the country. Ermita rejected insinuations that Malacañang could be involved in the incident after an identification card supposedly belonging to an employee from the Office of the Presidential Adviser for Intelligence was found in the vehicle where the body was found. He said there is no such office in Malacañang and all intelligence work and units are under the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, the PNP and the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. He also denied knowledge of a certain Aforque Pa is employed in Malacañang. Ermita said politics could the reason behind efforts to link Malacañang in the incident. Rabaya’s body, which sustained a gunshot wound to the head and the abdomen, was found inside a white Toyota Fortuner with license plate ZDW 656 past midnight Saturday. Also found inside the vehicle were licenses for several firearms, the ID of Pa and several pieces of women’s lingerie inside a shopping bag. Rabaya, then a Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrat candidate, ran in 2004 for congressman in the fourth district of Quezon against Lorenzo Tañada III of the Liberal Party (LP), Efren Villaseñor of the Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (PDSP) and Robert Yap-Diangco of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) and lost. - GMANews.TV