Naga City - Aquino brings Robredo home

“I think he wants to bring a friend home,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad told the Philippine Daily Inquirer at the Masbate airport.

At high noon Tuesday, President Benigno Aquino took home the remains of Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, fulfilling a promise to his grief-stricken family.

“Ma’am Leni, kids here. Honors drumming slow cadence, trumpet with mournful wail. So so tearfully sad. You’re home now Jesse,” Transportation Secretary Manuel Roxas said in a Twitter message addressed to Robredo’s wife Maria Leonor upon landing with the President at Naga Airport.

Mr. Aquino flew from Manila to Masbate City upon hearing the news that Robredo’s body had been recovered three days after his plane crashed into the sea. He accompanied the flag-draped casket bearing Robredo’s body on the C-130 Hercules on the flight to Naga City.

On Tuesday night, the President signed Proclamation No. 460 declaring the period from Tuesday until the day of Robredo’s interment as national days of mourning, Malacañang said.

The proclamation said that, until interment day, the flag shall be lowered to half staff in Malacañang, in Naga City and at the Department of Interior and Local Government and offices under it. It also said the flag shall be flown at half staff in all government buildings and posts abroad for six days.

Retrieval operations for the two pilots who perished in the crash of the four-seater Piper Seneca along with Robredo—Capt. Jessup Bahinting, owner of the plane and CEO of Aviatour Air in Cebu, and Nepalese copilot Kshitiz Chand— were to continue Wednesday. Robredo’s police aide, Senior Insp. June Paolo Abrazado, survived the tragedy.

Roxas, head of the search and rescue operations in Masbate City, said the remains of Robredo and the two pilots were spotted by divers inside the fuselage of the ill-fated light plane, which was lying belly up some 800 meters from the Masbate shoreline at a depth of 50 meters.

In a hastily convened press briefing at 9:15 a.m., Roxas in a somber tone announced the “sad news.” He said that divers led by Matt Reed of Britain found the wreckage of the plane at 7:21 a.m.

“The body has indications that it belongs to Sec. Jesse,” said Roxas as he tried to fight off tears. “Sad as it is, we are now in search and recovery retrieval at 9:30 a.m.”