• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Almost four years after she survived an ambush during the 2019 elections, Moises Padilla Mayor Ella Celestina Garcia-Yulo and her family have yet to attain justice.
While Yulo, then vice mayor of Moises Padilla, survived the attempt on her life, her brother, Mark, and nephew, Michael, did not make it, after their convoy was fired upon by a group of armed men, on April 25, 2019.
Yulo said the threats against her life remains, noting that the perpetrators remain at-large.
She, however, neither confirmed nor denied if she was the one referred to by the Police Regional Office 6, as the lone local chief executive in Negros Occidental with death threats.
Despite the assurance and order of then President Rodrigo Duterte to arrest all the suspects, Yulo expressed her lamentation that they have yet to be all accounted for.
So the threat is still there, the Moises Padilla mayor said, including those from policemen who were dismissed from service.
The Philippine National Police has been instructed by the Department of Interior and Local Government to conduct threat assessments on all local chief executives (LCEs), following the assassination of Negros Oriental Gov. Roel Degamo and other LCEs all over the country.
There are now proposals to institutionalize the granting of a security package to elected government officials (EGOs).
Yulo said it should be for the security experts to determine, since some EGOs have threats coming from the New People’s Army, while for others, it may be personal.
The lady mayor is however unfazed by threats against her life. “If I will always think of it, wala ko mahimo sa pangabuhi ko (I won’t be able to do anything with my life), as a mayor also,” Yulo said.
What is important, I am working and performing my obligations, she stressed.
Yulo is currently on her second term as mayor of Moises Padilla town.*
