Suspect in Arles slay
retracts, cries torture
BUT NBI, JUDGE’S KIN  SAY HE’S LYING
BY CARLA GOMEZ

Revolutionary Proletarian Army-Alex Boncayao Brigade member Eddie Fortunado yesterday told a Bacolod court he was tortured into admitting that he participated in the murder of Judge Henry Arles, and claimed he did not willingly seek the National Bureau of Investigation’s protective custody.

Fortunado, 24, who has been under NBI custody in Manila, testified at the hearing of a petition for a Writ of Amparo filed by his mother, Tessa, before Judge Fernando Elumba, Bacolod Regional Trial Court Branch 42, to compel the NBI to produce her son.

The suspect, who was brought to court under heavy security and wearing a bulletproof vest, hugged his mother and wept on seeing her.

Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr. is no longer the provincial chairman of the Nationalist People’s Coalition in Negros Occidental

Kabankalan Mayor Isidro Zayco confirmed yesterday that he has already received a copy of his appointment as the new NPC provincial chairman.

Zayco said his appointment order was signed by NPC president Frisco San Juan. He and three other Negros Occidental mayors, who used to be affiliated with Lakas-NUCD, took their oath as new NPC members last month in Manila, without Marañon, who was not invited to the activity, although he was still the NPC provincial chairman then.

Rep. Alfredo Abelardo Benitez (Neg. Occ., 3rd District) yesterday stressed the need to veer away from focusing on sugar alone, and to work at transforming the entire sugarcane industry into a diversified multi-product producer.

Reforms must be made now to ensure that we will have nothing to fear in 2015 when trade liberalization kicks in, Benitez said, in his keynote address before more than 1,000 delegates to the 59th Annual National Convention of the Philippine Sugar Technologists Association, at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City.

Benitez, who outlined the salient features of his House Bill 6113 or the Sugarcane Industry Development Act, stressed that to transform into a multi-product and diversified industry, the challenge is for all stakeholders to unite and act with the same vision..