by PNA
Twenty six years ago, former Antique Governor Evelio B. Javier was fatally shot in broad daylight at the plaza fronting the Antique Provincial Capitol while the canvassing of results of the snap election between then President Ferdinand Marcos and Ninoy Aquino’s widow Cory was going on.
Javier was talking with several friends when hooded men coming from nowhere, some of them were later identified as members of the Philippine Army, shot him.
The first burst of gunfire sent everyone in the plaza scampered for safety while the former Governor, knowing that he was the target of the assassins, ran away from the people.
The gunmen chased him until they caught him inside the comfort room at the back of a commercial building near the town plaza where his body was riddled by the assassin’s bullets.
Attending physicians declared him dead on arrival at the Antique Provincial Hospital where he was rushed.
In today’s Javier death anniversary, a simple day-long commemorative ceremony started with a Pamukaw at 4 a.m. via a motorcade of vehicles playing Evelio Javier’s favorite song “Impossible Dream†going around the towns of San Jose, Sibalom and Hamtic.
A holy mass at the Mensa Domini chapel follows at 7 a.m. after which his relatives, headed by his younger brother Governor Exequiel B. Javier, friends and political supporters visited his grave at the San Jose Catholic cemetery.
A program follows at the plaza now named Evelio B. Javier Freedom Park where local government officials and employees and the people offered flowers to the hero’s bronze statue in his honor.
Children’s games will also be held in the afternoon as well as candle-lighting ceremony at 6 p.m.
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