Laguna vice

The killing of a 19-year-old student of the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, Laguna, has understandably riled not only the university community but the local and national governments as well. Ray Bernard Peñaranda, an agriculture student, was stabbed dead on March 4, causing fear and rage in UPLB as it happened less than a week after a student of Los Baños National High School was raped and slain in the same vicinity. The incidents have prompted the relief of the town’s police chief and the entire municipal police force, as well as the rescheduling to an earlier date of a security summit originally set on March 24.

Peñaranda was stabbed in the chest by holdup men in Barangay Batong Malake at around 1:30 a.m. and was pronounced dead on arrival at Los Baños Doctors Hospital. It was in the same barangay that, on Feb. 27, the body of 14-year-old Rochel Geronda was found, a victim of apparent rape.

The killings have prompted a UPLB-wide campaign for justice and tighter security. The sprawling campus at the foot of the fabled Mount Makiling has porous borders that may have made it easier for criminal syndicates to prey on its young residents, many of whom come from outside Laguna. Peñaranda in fact was from Tanay, Rizal. With two other male students, he was coming from a dance rehearsal and was on his way home to a rented apartment when he was attacked by two men aboard a motorcycle on F.O. Santos Street in Batong Malake. His companions later told the police that it was the motorcycle’s back rider who had punched and stabbed the victim with a knife after announcing a holdup.

The supposed lookout has tagged two fraternity men as the perpetrators, but it remains to be seen whether the case would proceed from there.

The UPLB administration and the local government have not escaped blame for the poor security on and around the campus. Five months earlier, on Oct. 11, 2011, 19-year-old computer science student Given Grace Cebanico was also raped and murdered, her body found on IBP Road in Barangay Tuntungin-Putho. Three months before that, two young men, one of them a 16-year-old, were killed in the same area. These killings happening one after the other last year should have alerted campus and local officials on the need to tighten security around UPLB. But whatever plans were drawn up to improve security have proved inadequate.

Still, while there’s a need to step up security at UPLB, the problem may go beyond the confines of the campus. Los Baños, so named by the Spaniards for its volcanic-steam baths supposedly invested with curative powers, has been a favorite sanctuary of Metro Manilans eager to escape urban stress and the tropical weather. Its neighboring towns are likewise located at the foot of Makiling, a dormant volcano, and have built a strong tourism industry out of their hot springs. Tourists are likewise drawn to Laguna because of the beautiful Laguna de Bay and the province’s beautiful topography. Moreover, Laguna has become an educational center in Southern Luzon, with UPLB and several higher education institutions, such as Letran in Calamba and Colegio de San Agustin in Biñan, establishing campuses there. In addition, Laguna has become an industrial site, with Cabuyao City, for example, hosting the huge plants of Nestlé, San Miguel, Asia Brewery and Wyeth.

It’s unfortunate that despite billing itself as an industrial center and a tourist and student mecca, Laguna has been unable to manage its peace and order. Only last month, a public school teacher was found dead in a vacant lot in Victoria town. Last year, a forest guard was shot dead in Bay. In 2007, fashion designer Ernest Santiago was murdered in his own home in Pagsanjan. Many of these cases have not been resolved. Last week, two Laguna policemen turned themselves over to their superior after a criminal complaint was filed against them by the justice department for the killing of a Chinese-Filipino businessman in Quezon City in January.

It’s no wonder that there was much to-do recently when Biñan rolled out 32 closed-circuit television cameras, three of them near Laguna Lake, for round-the-clock monitoring of key areas and major thoroughfares in the city. Last October during the spate of killings in UPLB, campus officials talked about installing such cameras. But apparently, nothing has materialized of the plan. The failure of UPLB and Los Baños officials to improve security on and around the campus merely reflects on the sticky problem of public safety in Laguna.