Public officials also getting vulnerable.

Without sounding alarmist, or acting like the boy who cried "Wolf", nevertheless, reports on killings of government functionaries are getting more frequent.

What's unusual is that such grim incidents often land in the inside pages - now seldom bannered front-page - like any quotidian or banal provincial newsbits. Editorial attitude to such rubouts may indicate society's indifference to tragic episodes, like saying, "That's dime-a-dozen occurrence, so what's new?"

And this public insensitiveness could be what is appalling. God forbid the day that taking a man's life is as trivial as swatting a pesky fly or a blood-lust mosquito!

Not so long ago - and still a crime unsolved - an assistant prosecutor was waylaid and shot while at the wheel of his vehicle on a "red" traffic light, enroute to his home. Speculative theories have been bandied about among the legal circle on what could have been the motive of the mastermind, as the gunman could have had been presumably hired, like, "negosyo lang" routine.

Sometime in January this year, the Dept. of Agrarian Reform (DAR) chief legal officer of Region 7, Atty. Eleazar Casipong, was also gunned down in transit to Sibulan town in Negros Oriental. The ambush of Casipong could be work-related to his being counsel for agrarian reform beneficiaries whose area of responsibility covered Siquijor and Negros Oriental.

The theory on the Casipong slay focused on the animosity between the landowners affected by the land reform agitprops, and the aggressive tenants and the DAR personnel combo on the other. The latter often get the ire of landlords who may perceive the DAR as biased against then. And perhaps, the perception may be the truth in some cases.

Corollary to the Casipong tragedy, DAR-7 director Rodolfo Inson, reportedly "fears for his life" as well. He opines that the personal security of DAR personnel is at stake because of the tension between the tenants and the landowners.

In fact, Inson had asked for police escorts for DAR officials imminently under threats, but then the PNP purportedly denied it for lack of PNP elements available. And so, feeling seriously insecure, Inson is hiring close-in security escort at his own expense.

Last March 10, Land Transportation Office assistant regional director Camilo Guarin was also ambushed by gunmen, and sustained gunshot injuries. Fortunately, he survived the ambush and timely taken to a hospital in Quezon City for treatment and recuperation.

Again, speculations are toyed with, also zeroing in on work-related motives arising from the temptations at LTO where shenanigans are bruited about. There are the ubiquitous "fixers", or the irregularities on registration of carnapped vehicles, or on illegal documentation of smuggled vehicles, or sale of choice car plates, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, that smear the LTO bureaucracy, save for a trickle, if any.

Another public official slain on March 11 right within the compound of the DPWH along Roxas Boulevard was USec Ramon Aquino, who died in the hospital on March 19.

Again, fairly or unfairly, the DPWH is one department often tarnished in some shady and sleazy transactions and projects. In fairness to USEC Aquino, however, no insinuations or nifty innuendoes have been raised. Nonetheless, whether the assassination was work-related or not, there's always that naughty perception of some business deal gone awry.

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