EDITORIAL - Another kidnapping

For the second time in a year, a prominent family fell victim to a kidnapping. This time, the toll was so much more devastating than a multimillion-peso ransom payment. On Wednesday morning, two bodies were found in Valenzuela City. One was identified as Connie Yap Wong. The other was her bodyguard, Police Officer 1 Dionisio Borca Jr. of the Western Police District. Both had gunshot wounds to the head.

Wong’s driver, Arcangel Barquilla, said seven armed men in two vans waylaid them at 8:30 Monday morning in Barangay Manresa, Quezon City. He said the Ilonggo-speaking kidnappers, who identified themselves as policemen, left him unharmed after his would-be executioner’s gun jammed. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of P40 million. Wong offered P300,000 that was in her possession, Barquilla said. That same day she and her bodyguards were dead.

Wong was an aunt of Mary Grace Cheng-Rogasas, daughter of the owners of Uratex Foam Co. where Wong worked as corporate secretary and collection agent. Rogasas herself was kidnapped June 18 together with Borca at the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City. They were freed in exchange for P20 million. Other members of her family had also been kidnapped in the past.

As in the abduction of Rogasas, investigators appear to be pursuing the possibility of an inside job. While law enforcers are trying to crack the case, there are other kidnappers to be saved elsewhere. Reports said a lumber supplier’s daughter was kidnapped Sept. 27 in San Fernando, Pampanga, while a hotel owner in Dagupan City was reported missing on the same day and is believed to have been abducted.

These crimes should remind people of the terror that has stalked the nation for several years now. Instead of wasting so much energy worrying about bioterrorism, everyone should worry about the real threat of kidnapping. Whether the deaths of Wong and Borca were the handiwork of groups out to destabilize the administration or of ordinary criminals, the perpetrators must be caught. The National Anti-Crime Commission has set up a task force against ransom kidnappings. Let’s see this task force do its job.