MANILA – Former Special Assistant to the President (SAP) Christopher "Bong" Go on Monday said President Rodrigo Duterte will visit the wake of sugarcane workers who were killed in Sagay City, Negros Occidental last Saturday.
Go said Duterte is set to fly to Sagay before noon on Tuesday to personally express his sympathy to the families of the victims.
According to media reports, a group of armed men fired at the sugarcane farmers, killing nine of them, while they were eating dinner inside makeshift tents on Saturday night at Hacienda Nene in Barangay Bulanon in Sagay.
Malacañang condemned in the strongest possible terms the "dastardly act", assuring the families of the victims that government will conduct a "thorough and impartial" investigation.
“Families of the victims of this extremely cruel act can count on the government that it will enforce the full wrath of the law against its perpetrators,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement Sunday.
Meanwhile, Panelo said the massacre of nine sugarcane workers would affect efforts to resume peace talks with the communists if the New People’s Army (NPA) was really behind the killing.
“Definitely, magkakaroon ng factor iyan (it will have a factor),” Panelo said in a radio interview.
Panelo said initial findings show that the surviving victims were able to identify the armed men as members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA. (PNA)
