Police team off to Bicol to probe jueteng whistle-blower’s slay

A team from the Pasay City police left for Albay province on Tuesday to search for leads on the killing of Wilfredo “Boy" Mayor, who had accused President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s husband of involvement in jueteng in 2005. The team was also going to talk to Mayor’s relatives in his home province to get more clues on the motives behind his killing, according to a report by dzBB radio’s Manny Vargas. Before he was shot dead last Sunday in Pasay City, Mayor was supposedly preparing to expose alleged anomalies in the road projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in Albay. The Southern Police District of the National Capital Region has formed a task force to look into Mayor’s ambush. Retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz claimed Mayor knew that a powerful construction company had managed to corner government construction projects in the province. “He [Mayor] wanted to expose the huge dirty scam before the general public so that small contractors like him could hopefully win some equally small public works projects. He was prepared to name names, to expose the graft and corruption, and to even say how much public funds had been lost to numerous ghost projects here and there," Cruz said on his blog site. Cruz said Mayor had looked worried when he confided to him last Wednesday afternoon. GMANews.TV tried to reach DPWH Region 5 Director Danilo Manalang for comment, but he could not be reached as of posting time. Mayor was part of an anti-gambling group Cruz had founded. He was also a member of the Whistle-blowers Association, a group of witnesses who have testified in several investigations of various scandals that have hounded the Arroyo administration. In 2005, Mayor testified at a Senate hearing where he linked First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo and other government officials to juetengL, a multi-billion-peso illegal numbers game. Arroyo has denied the charges. The probe was jointly conducted by the Senate public order and games and amusement committees formerly headed by Senator Manuel “Manny" Villar Jr. and Senator Manuel “Lito" Lapid, respectively. Lapid is a supporter of the Arroyo administration and is seeking reelection this year, while Villar is the presidential bet of the Nacionalista Party. The inquiry went nowhere after two witnesses — Richard Garcia and Demosthenes Abraham Riva — retracted their testimonies linking the Arroyos to the jueteng scandal. Garcia and Riva said opposition Senator Panfilo Lacson had coached them into saying that the Arroyos had received payola from jueteng operations. — Sophia Regina M. Dedace/NPA, GMANews.TV