Arroyo caught in an impunity dilemma
By Donald Kirk
Don't count on Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to hunt down the
killers and rapists responsible for last week's massacre of at least 57 people,
many of them women, around half of them journalists.
The massacre in a Muslim-dominated region of the southern Philippine island of
Mindanao confronts Arroyo with a political and moral dilemma: will she, amid an
international outcry, pursue decisively the killers when those who apparently
ordered the
massacre were her close political allies?
Arroyo is expected to tread a fine line between adhering to numerous laws that
allow for the attenuation of legal proceedings and giving an appearance of the
toughness needed to bring the killers swiftly to justice.
She can choose to display "fairness" by defending to the hilt the right of the
prime suspects to all the legal defenses they are allowed. Arroyo can suggest
police and prosecutors show due respect for all those implicated in the
massacre by not questioning them too severely.
Or she and the commanders of the armed forces and national police can act
decisively and invade the compounds of powerful clan members, question all of
them and their aides, arrest suspects, seize records, and drive those involved
out of government and politics.
Even as Arroyo ordered a state of emergency surrounding the area of the
massacre site, questions have arisen about her will to act, consistent with "a
culture of impunity" against law and order that has become entrenched over many
years of misrule.
Killings may be more frequent in the Muslim south, but they also go on
everywhere else where hereditary families control wide swaths of land and hold
the levers of power in the hierarchy of government and business.
"The government definitely has the numbers, but not the political will," said
Vilnor Papa, Philippine campaign manager of Amnesty International. "We have
political killings. We have summary executions."
This time, the massacre was excessive even by local standards, culminating in
the highest death toll in modern Philippine history. It happened brazenly in a
daylight attack, seen by witnesses, in which the kidnappers and killers
evidently faced no threat from local police, who according to some accounts may
have been involved in the massacre.
After initial flurries of headlines, prayers and denunciations, killings of one
or two people in the country's violent southern regions are usually soon
forgotten. But this one undoubtedly will endure in memory as emblematic of much
deeper problems.
The killers apparently were not from the armed forces, but were alleged agents
of the mayor of the town of Ampatuan that bears his family's name. The Ampatuan
mayor, Andal Ampatuan Jr, eager to succeed his father as governor of
Maguindanao province, faced a potential electoral challenge from a rival clan
leader, Ismael Mangudadatu, vice mayor of a nearby town who refused to stand
down amid threats to his life.
Assuming gunmen would be reluctant to shoot women and journalists, Mangudadatu
sent his wife and two sisters, accompanied by a number of other women as well
as local reporters, to register his candidacy with the local election
commission. The victims were riding in a convoy through Ampatuan when 100 or so
gunmen herded them off, killing the wife and sisters, a number of other women
and about 30 journalists.
Restive region
Mayor Ampatuan, his accusers claim, acted as though he had little fear of legal
retribution. In a region barely subdued by Spanish and then American
colonialists, warlordism has replaced old-style feudalism, with extended family
groupings fighting tenaciously for political perks, privileges and payoffs.
After the killings, Arroyo's government was quick to distance itself from the
Ampatuan family, denouncing the deed as "unconscionable" and declaring no one
"untouchable". But the link between rulers and killers seemed clear - the
provincial police chief and three other officers were seen earlier with the
gunmen, according to local news reports.
Now in jail in Manila facing trial for multiple murders, Mayor Ampatuan does
not seem to have been questioned very rigorously. Free to give interviews
through the bars of a cell that he shares with 16 other suspected criminals, he
has blamed the mass murder on a familiar target, the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) rebel group.
He is said to have 40 lawyers on side, churning out the legal paperwork to
ensure that he won't go on trial any time soon - if ever. His older brother,
Zaldy, ensconced as governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao
(ARMM), also seems anxious to help.
The ARMM, set up years ago to satisfy demands of Muslim leaders in Mindanao,
serves as a conduit for wheeling and dealing between Manila and the ARMM's
half-dozen member provinces and lesser fiefdoms. On a compound in the city of
Cotabato, next to Maguindanao, the ARMM headquarters provides a perch from
which ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan has issued statements calling for "fair
play" and rallying loyalists to his brother's defense.
The web of compromises that catapulted Arroyo to an election win in 2004 means
she is unlikely to go beyond headline-grabbing words and a highly publicized
manhunt, all routine whenever a political killing occurs in the Philippines,
while leaving the Ampatuans in power.
The Ampatuan political machine, led by the governor, had guaranteed vast
majorities in the province for Arroyo and her followers. In the 2004
presidential election, she won 100% of the votes in some towns - at some
polling stations the number of votes for her exceeded that of registered voters
- and her candidates in Maguindanao won easy majorities in the 2007 mid-term
elections for the Philippine Congress.
Hope for justice, however slim, may lie in the uproar over the massacre - and
the fact that Arroyo cannot under the Philippine constitution run for another
term as president and may not feel obligated to the Ampatuan family to deliver
the votes for her anointed successor candidate.
Since so many local journalists were killed, Arroyo faces pressure not only
from the Philippines' National Union of Journalists, but also from
international organizations such as Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans
frontiers) and the Committee to Protect Journalists, both of which have
strongly condemned what happened.
"There is pressure from all sectors for the government to do something," said
Girlie Padilla, secretary general of the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and
Peace. But she is not optimistic. "Will they cover up for the ally who did the
killings?" she asked rhetorically. "They would do anything to cover up for this
group. We will have a hard time getting justice."
The whole crisis in law and order is deepened by the poverty of the area, an
agricultural region where most people subsist below the poverty line and at the
mercy of corrupt landlords and officials. They enforce control through their
own private armies, many of whose foot soldiers also serve in the armed forces
or police.
In this environment, extremist propaganda inevitably draws some into the
insurgent MILF. The fact that the government now has 3,000 troops in the area,
many of them in pursuit of Muslim guerrillas who apparently had nothing to do
with the massacre, adds to the sense of frustration among those hoping for
justice.
Arroyo feels she has to keep Muslim family leaders on side while soldiers
battle the MILF, which is still deeply rooted in camps in remote regions. The
Ampatuan family, in turn, has ties to another large Muslim grouping, the Moro
National Liberation Front, which over the years has made, and broken, its own
ceasefire arrangements with the government.
"The area is highly militarized," said Satur Ocampo, a long-time foe of the
government who now serves as deputy leader of the opposition in the Philippines
House of Representatives. "The Philippine National Police was on alert, but
it's quite apparent they were unable to prevent this massacre." While the
police "talk about collecting firearms", he said, "heavily armed bodyguards and
politicians can perpetrate this action without law enforcement".
Donald Kirk, a long-time journalist in Asia, is author of Philippines
in Crisis: US Power versus Local Revolt and Looted: the Philippines
After the Bases.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
