This face-to-face outing with residents,however,was about to take a most sinister turn.
Allowed through the gate despite wielding assault rifles,the men,clad in military garb and bulletproof vests,strode in and spent a few seconds surveying the scene.
Then they opened fire. Degamo,seated behind a desk as he spoke with people,was gunned down,as were eight others before the assassins retreated to their vehicles and raced off.
The brazen daylight slaying has rocked even the Philippines,one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a publicly elected official.
Bloodletting is a tragic part of the electoral landscape in the Philippines,which is dominated by family dynasties and political clans clinging to and competing for turf and the business associated with it.
Many local and regional officials have their own private armies and have been known to liquidate a rival and their associates with barely a second thought,so high are the stakes.
“Any political clan or family especially in the local government would most likely control the local economy … so it’s difficult to accept defeat,” said political commentator Edmund Tayao. “Hence the very personal nature of politics in the Philippines.”
Most appallingly,58 people,including 32 journalists,were slaughtered in 2009 in Ampatuan on the island of Mindanao in 2009 in the lead-up to a gubernatorial poll.
The pattern has continued since including during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte between 2016 and 2022,when more than two dozen mayors and vice-mayors,as well as a congressman allied to Duterte,were taken out. Some had alleged links to narcotics,falling in the midst of a brutal war Duterte waged on drugs in which as many as 30,000 people died. Others were murdered amid personal vendettas.
The assassination of Degamo is not the first under Duterte’s successor Ferdinand Marcos jnr,who took office last June. Last month a deputy mayor from northern Cagayan was shot dead en route to Manila and the governor of Lanao del Sur province,on Mindanao,was also ambushed in February in an attack that killed four of his security staff.
In Negros Oriental,a cycle of killings in the past three years has made it a hotbed of political violence,with city councillors,other local officials and radio commentators among a spate of mostly unsolved murders.
In the wake of the governor’s death,attention has fallen on his political rival Arnolfo Teves jnr,a congressman whose brother Pryde Henry Teves had initially unseated Degamo in last year’s election. That result was reversed by the Commission on Elections when the votes for a nuisance candidate going by the name Ruel Degamo were re-distributed
Teves,51,had flown out to the United States for health treatment before Degamo was killed but is under investigation after at least five of the 13 suspects arrested in connection with the shooting reportedly linked him with the crime.
“What I can tell you is that there are circumstances that lead you to the conclusion that[Teves] was perhaps involved in the crime,but the specifics of that we cannot tell you as of now,” Philippine Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said this week.
Teves denies any part in Degamo’s shooting but says he fears for his safety and is refusing calls to return to the country. According to Remulla,he is now somewhere else in south-east Asia.
“They immediately blame me for the killing. In any investigation,evidence should go first before naming any suspect or the mastermind,” Teves said in a video message posted to his Facebook page.
“But what happened in Negros Oriental? They identified the suspect and mastermind before the evidence. That’s wrong. It should not be like that.
“What I am asking is fairness and not to put all the blame to a certain person. I am also asking to look for other angles.”
‘If they can kill a governor,they can kill anybody’
One angle worth exploring,in the eyes of Teves and others,is the absence of some of Degamo’s security team when the group of former military men descended on his compound.
The governor ordinarily had four active police escorts but two were on leave on the day,and one was late for duty,leaving only one present.
Janice Degamo,who has her own armed protection squad as the local mayor,has said she believes the security detail assigned to her husband played no role whatsoever in his demise.
There has been significant scrutiny,however,on the police since the March 4 bloodbath,with more than 100 officers relieved of duty by the Philippine National Police - including the entire force of Bayawan City,the hometown of Teves and where the first suspects were captured. On Thursday,the provincial chief of police was also removed.
Army Major Cenon Pancito III,the spokesman for a civil and military special taskforce for the case commissioned by Marcos,toldTheSydney Morning Herald andThe Agethe fact three of the four police assigned to Degamo were missing at the time of the shooting had to be examined.
“Every angle should be looked into. We even asked the police leadership to look into it,” he said. “It’s for them to first investigate their men,before passing a report to the joint taskforce of what happened. As of now,we don’t have a conclusion.”
As theories proliferate,that is certainly not the only other line of inquiry.
“We are looking into connivance of even people on the governor’s side,” Pancito said. “[If] they have sold their soul to the other side.”
Having helped secure the arrests of the alleged killers and set out to dismantle armed groups,as directed by Marcos,the military is also intent on securing the safety of family members,witnesses and the population of Negros Oriental.
That includes Teves,should he return,with the president insisting he faces no known threat.
“You are rich,you have a private jet,you can land wherever you want and our army will cover the perimeter of the air force base,” said Marcos,sending a message to Teves as he spoke to reporters in Manila.
In inland Pamplona,there is already an increased military presence,with army vehicles keeping guard in the main street of the town as tricycles and sugarcane trucks plough through.
At the Degamo family compound up the hill,meanwhile,workers have been busy trying to fortify the entrance with a concrete wall.
It is too late to protect Degamo,of course.
But his death must be a line in the sand,said Pancito.
“Negros has had its share of killings in the past and nobody dares to talk. But with the killing of the governor,it is now or never on the part of the government,” he said.
“If we cannot solve this case it would mean if they can kill a governor,they can kill anybody.”
- with Jeoffrey Maitem