While the Anti-Salvaging Bill pending at the House of Representatives would effectively consider extrajudicial killing as a heinous crime, it can nevertheless be a “tool for political harassment” if used as an excuse to penalize public officers, especially those who are in the opposition, UNO president and Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay said on Sunday.

He assailed the provision of House Bill 6601 that seeks to suspend for 120 days local executives charged with inaction on salvaging cases in their areas.

Primarily authored by House Speaker Prospero Nograles, HB 6601 was drafted after a spate of summary killings reported in Mindanao. Davao City is now at the center of an investigation by the Human Rights Commission following reports of over 800 victims of summary executions in the city since 1998. All of the victims, two of them members of the media, were slain by armed men who were alleged members of the Davao Death Squad.

Under HB 6601, there will be a presumption of administrative negligence on any public officer, person in authority or agent of a person in authority except in areas of conflict or combat zones “if there is an increase in the number of extrajudicial killing or salvaging in his area of responsibility despite the continuous allocation and disbursement of peace and order and intelligence funds or similar allocations from the local government to such public office, person in authority or agent of a person in authority.”

“We would have appreciated the bill more had it been filed earlier and approved by Congress earlier. It could have served as a deterrent to the extra judicial killings under the administration of Mrs. Arroyo,” he said, adding that the human rights group Karapatan had recorded 1,013 cases of summary executions since 2001.