Philippines Rocked by Spree of Politician Killings

Negros Oriental Governor Roel Degamo was meeting his constituents face-to-face on the morning of Saturday, March 4, when six men approached his compound and asked to enter. Once inside, they brandished assault rifles and opened fire, killing Degamo and eight others.

The assassination, which was captured by security cameras, gave the Philippines a cruel reminder that local political violence remains rampant under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.

Degamo, who had served as governor since 2011, was pronounced dead the same day he was shot by the six gunmen, who are believed to be former military members.

The killing received more attention than most in a country where it’s dangerous to be a local politician. Marcos, a political ally of Degamo, traveled to his wake in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental, days after the killings and has repeatedly promised to hold the killers accountable. He also ordered the Philippine National Police to probe “political hot spots” – areas where disputes between rival clans could potentially spill over into violence.

Degamo is the country’s first sitting governor to be assassinated in 35 years. But he’s far from the only politician to meet the same fate.

In February, the vice mayor of Aparri, a city in Cagayan province in northern Luzon, was killed along with five others as they sat in a vehicle outside a school in Nueva Vizcaya province, 275 kilometers to the south.

Also in February, the governor of Lanao del Sur province in southern Mindanao was wounded in an ambush that killed four members of his security staff. In the same month, the mayor of a town in Maguindanao del Sur, also in Mindanao, was shot in an attack on Roxas Boulevard, a major road and waterfront promenade in Manila.

Additionally, four former mayors and one former vice mayor have been killed since Marcos took office in June 2022, according to Rappler. That puts the Marcos administration on a similar trajectory of political violence as that of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, under whom at least 10 mayors and 18 vice mayors were killed.

In the aftermath of the killing of Degamo, suspicion has centered on a political rival, Arnolfo Teves Jr., who serves in the House of Representatives.

His brother, Pryde Henry Teves, had initially won the Negros Oriental gubernatorial election last year over Degamo. However, the country’s electoral board overturned the result after votes cast for a nuisance candidate named Ruel Degamo were attributed to the sitting governor.

Teves has failed to appear at the House of Representatives, which had opened an investigation into his conduct. The representative had flown to the United States for a stem cell treatment before Degamo was killed, but did not return as expected on March 9.

Teves took to Facebook on March 6 to deny any involvement in the killings. His lawyer has said the congressman is afraid to return to the Philippines as he fears for his life.

Marcos has insisted that Teves faces no threat should he return to the country. “You are rich, you have a private jet, you can land wherever you want and our army will cover the perimeter of the air force base,” he said in a message to Teves while speaking to reporters in Manila.

On March 16, Marcos asked Interpol to issue a blue notice against the suspects in Degamo’s killing, including Teves.

But there are unanswered questions surrounding the incident itself. According to a task force assembled by Marcos to investigate the killings, three of the four security staff assigned to protect Degamo were missing at the time of the assassination, leading members of the task force to wonder if any of Degamo’s staffers or political allies had been paid or coerced to stand down.

Negros, an island in the central Philippines split longitudinally into two provinces, has been a hotbed of violence – political and otherwise – especially in the past five years.

In 2019, more than a dozen sugar workers were killed by gunmen in what activists allege was a military operation. The military denied involvement and claimed without evidence that the workers were armed communist rebels. Since then, numerous local politicians, journalists, and activists have been killed on the island.