Bayan Muna leader killed in Bulacan

SAN MIGUEL, Bulacan — A leader of the left-wing party list group Bayan Muna was shot dead Thursday by two still unidentified gunmen in Barangay Tartaro, this town.

Wilfredo Mananghaya, 42, of Barangay Sibul, was on his way home from the San Miguel public market when the gunmen followed his motorcycle and shot him at the back of his head.

Witnesses say that Mananghaya still managed to speed away but was shot again several times, which resulted in his death.

His family declined to comment on his death because of fear that the suspects might get back at them.

Mananghaya’s neighbors told The STAR they had previously cautioned him that some unidentified men were seen snooping on him.

"As a barangay councilor and a leader of the cause-oriented group, he had been very much against illegal quarrying and illegal logging in this town, that is why we suspect that illegal quarry operators are behind his death," a neighbor told The STAR in Filipino.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Hernani Braganza sought police assistance for the immediate investigation and arrest of Mananghaya’s killers.

Braganza said he had already sent a letter to Central Luzon police regional director, Chief Supt. Reynaldo Berroya, to investigate the cold-blooded murder of Mananghaya, also a leader of the Alyansang Magbubukid ng Bulacan, and arrest the culprits.

Braganza added that he had also directed Central Luzon agrarian reform regional director Nestor Acosta and Bulacan agrarian reform officer Miguel Mendoza to assist the police and provide them any information that may lead to the immediate arrest of the suspects.

The motive of the killing was not immediately known, but the same report said that the incident may be triggered by a land dispute case between two groups of farmers, each claiming as the rightful beneficiaries of a certain landholdings in Barangay Sibul, San Miguel, Bulacan.

The property was formerly owned by the Onazus Realty Development Corp.

The report added that Mananghaya and his group broke into the said plantation that was already awarded by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to a group of farmer-beneficiaries. Mananghaya insisted that the certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) issued to the beneficiaries were fake and that he and his group should be given a share over the property.

The group allegedly uprooted all the plants and destroyed the fences installed by the farmer-beneficiaries on their farmlands. — James Mananghaya