Archive for the ‘mindanao’ Category
miriam eyeballs, gloria blinks, ermita fumbles
interesting, the sudden lifting of martial law in maguindanao effective saturday 9pm. what a relief, yes, but also what a surprise. with hostage situations erupting in basilan and agusan del sur while congress was holding that joint session to vote on proc1959, all the signs pointed to a set-up to systematically desensitize first the people of mindanao, then maybe of the visayas and luzon, to military rule for the sake of peace and order in the run-up to the may 2010 elections. and with gloria checking into st. luke’s for a check-up over the weekend, no one was expecting any kind of change in the new status quo.
so what are we to think? are we to believe gma’s cohorts that suddenly it came to pass that the objectives of military rule were attained, mission accomplished, time to lift martial law, everybody happy? parang fairy tale, if you ask me. just yesterday, friday, press secretary cerge remonde was being nasty, accusing anti-martial law people in congress and in the streets of sympathizing with andal ampatuan jr. and warning that if the supreme court listened to them and ruled proc1959 unconstitutional, it would make the ampatuans very happy indeed.
UNFORTUNATELY, a vocal minority in the combined chambers of Congress have joined agitators outside the Batasang Pambansa Complex, in condemnation of the President. The crisis in Maguindanao, for them, has become fresh fodder for their political agenda.
Are they now shedding copious tears in sympathy with Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., others in the clan, and some 160 individuals who have been arrested or are about to be arrested for planning or for participating in the gruesome massacre?
It is understandable that the Ampatuan clan should petition the Supreme Court to declare the Maguindanao martial law unconstitutional. Their awesome power to defy lawful authority is slipping away, and their ability to evade criminal responsibility is in jeopardy. But what are we to make of the politicians who have taken the side of this powerful family?
They do not say it out loud, but a Supreme Court decision favorable to their cause could nullify the arrest of the suspects and may render the evidence against them inadmissible.
i wonder what it was like for gloria, having to leave st. luke’s for a couple of hours or so just to preside over that national security council meeting and act upon the recommendation to lift martial law. she must have asked (if i were president i would have asked), why can’t it wait til monday?
why not indeed. i think because the order came from obama on high, no less. i think that miriam’s conspiracy theory, involving the notorious CIA, hit too close to home.
“This is part of a script. Who are orchestrating the events? It is obvious there is a conspiracy, a meeting of the minds. I have reason to believe that this (conspiracy) is not a random development. They’re not just happening. One, the timing is suspicious, second, there is no such pattern of one after the other in the history of this province,’’ she said.
…In a briefing for Senate reporters after attending the budget hearing of the Upper Chamber, Santiago said the conspiracy could consist of the beleaguered Ampatuan clan; the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); a cabal of a criminal group that would benefit the secretaries of the Department of National Defense (DND) or Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG); and the military establishment.
… Santiago said the Ampatuans, one of the two strong tribal clans fighting for supremacy in Maguindanao, could be working out a deal where in they would prefer to be charged with the crime of rebellion rather than multiple murder. Rebellion is difficult to prove and carries a lighter penalty. In case of conviction on rebellion charges, Santiago said the Ampatuans could be given parole or pardon.
She said the CIA could become a plain pawn in the Mindanao game “so they could do what the Philippine government is preventing them from doing so.”
and i’m not alone in thinking that obama had something to do with the lifting of martial law. just saw this tweet by manolo:
mlq3 Billy Esposo thinks Madame had votes in SC and Congress to OK martial law, it’s Washington that made her revoke it.
and no doubt secretary ermita wasn’t too happy about it ’cause, well, he fumbled the announcement. after his pasakalye, that things were returning to normal in maguindanao, the criminal justice system is now working, local government in place, armm governor replaced, he asked na for questions from the press, haha, someone had to remind him that he had forgotten “the most important item”: that gloria had agreed to lift martial law. ano ‘yon, senior moment? lol. more like a freudian slip of the tongue, but in reverse, like selective forgetting? a sign of subconscious, if fleeting, resistance, at the very least.
just goes to show what puppets gloria and her gang are, dancing to the beat of washington, ora mismo, like it or not.
mad about martial law
i thought the maguindanao massacre was the worst that could happen. until gloria declared martial law in ampatuan country on the pretext of “virtual rebellion.” so. for peace and order, “normalcy,” to return to maguindanao we are trusting counting-on the rule of the military, the very same military that seems to be the / a source of the ampatuans’ guns and ammunition.
i was wondering, what is really going on ba behind the scenes, what’s the big picture ba talaga, until i read this.
Analysis of the Ampatuan massacre by Bertini “Toto” Causing
An analysis, in the wake of the Ampatuan murders, by Bertini “Toto” Causing, a member of the board of the National Press Club of the Philippines and also legal consultant for the National Press Club. Mr Causing is columnist both of Hataw and Police Files Tonight. With the kind permission of Paul Brinkley-Rogers.
ANALYSIS
You must know that Norberto Gonzales as Defense Secretary is a “terror” operator and if he is to work with political operator Ronaldo Puno, they become a dreaded pair.
Remember that Gonzales came from National Intelligence Security Agency, from where came the Vidal Doble who taped Garcillano’s talks with Gloria.
Also remember that Puno (the bad one) was instrumental in making Miriam Santiago lose to FVR and in Garci operations in Mindanao.
You must also know that before the Ampatuan massacre, there were hell-bent planning sessions on how Gloria could possibly hold over, de facto or de jure.
They were looking at how they can foment war in Muslim areas to have a justification for sinister plots. Instead of launching war against MILF and MNLF which is expensive, what Gonzales did was to make “chismis” circulating between two possible warring clans.
The timing was perfect because Datu Andal Sr. was so worried how he can stay in power because of the three-term limit. Andal Sr. even went to the Comelec in the Province of Maguindanao to ask what should he do to enable him to run again for the 2010 elections.
A “bobo” Comelec official advised him to take a leave. Another Comelec official advised him to resign. Confused, Andal Sr. went to Malacanang and asked an Arroyo confidante what to do. And Andal was told that the only way for him to hold on to power is to prevent elections there from happening. And he was advised to do what is necessary.
I do not know what was the advice; but I surmise that he was egged on not to give in to the Mangudadatus who were hell bent on grabbing power from him. In short, “binatirya” or “tsinismis patalikod ang mga Mangudadatu kay Andal na aagawin ang poder sa kanila.”
And once the power is taken over, the Mangudadatus would take revenge for the earlier raids done on them resulting in seizure of firearms. Obssesed with desire to keep power revved up by “chismis”, the Ampatuans harbored deep hatred and extreme fear of losing power.
And to ensure that no election shall occur, the killings should be done with extreme brutality to justify “martial law,” a condition when no election can be held in the province.
They were only looking at killing and burying to nowhere the Mangudadatus and families so that they would only be recorded as missing and would be charged against the rebels or Abu Sayyaf, not thinking they would be including 30 journalists in their plan for they did not think that Mangudadatu would ask for the help of media men.
And if there would be martial law, the Ampatuans stay in power under the hold-over principle. But their game plot failed during the execution. Thank God: before they knew it, Toto Mangudadatu was able to know the abduction because his wife was able to call him up, prompting Toto Mangudadatu to call for Army assistance; the soldiers responded quick enough that forced the killers to escape even though the other victims were not yet buried, leading to the discovery of the plan; thus, the execution failed.
The original plot was just to make it appear that the victims disappeared mysteriously so that it can be blamed to heightened rebellion that would justify attacks on MILF which, in turn, would justify martial law.
Until here, I believe I have answered now the question why it should be as brutal as this. It was the Ampatuans who did the act and planned the act. The Gloria government only happened to have benefited from it to justify martial rule.
What would be the net effect when martial law gains momentum in Maguindanao? It will embolden the Gloria machines to do the same in other Muslim provinces: (a) Wahab Akbar’s family vs Gerry Salappudin’s in Basilan; (b) Sakur Tan clan vs Tupay Loong clan in Sulu; (c) Jaafar clan vs opponents in Tawi-Tawi; (d) Dimaporo clan in Lanao Norte against a challenging clan; and (e) Many clans in Lanao Sur.
If Norberto Gonzales would have his way, he wanted all of them to fight each other to justify martial law in the rest of Muslim provinces.
Remember that the total number of votes in these provinces is substantially big enough to cause suspension of proclamation of winners in Presidential, Vice-Presidential and Senatorial races.
So that when proclamation cannot be had and it will be aggravated and prolonged by creative petitions and protests to be filed before the Comelec, the Speaker of the House (Gloria) would act as Acting President.
Why? Since there would be no president, vice president and senators who would be proclaimed, the Speaker takes over under the Constitution. Gloria would argue that the 12 present senators cannot choose a Senate President because it needs at least 13 votes to elect the Senate President.
Another plus or bonus for them: the House of Representatives will approve to extend martial law by means of them voting together with the Senators where the senator’s vote is only one. A dummy petition shall be filed to question the act of “voting jointly” by means of outnumbering the Senators; and hoping the Gloria-appointees- dominated Supreme Court would rule that “voting jointly” means lumping together the senators and the congressmen and each of them has only ONE VOTE.
And when the Supreme Court would go Gloria’s way, they would now implement House Resolution 1109 calling for the senators and congressmen to “vote jointly” for a CON-ASS to pave the way for a parliamentary government.
This PLUS or BONUS may happen before or after the 2010 elections. If it happens after elections, the picture that you would see is that the leading candidates for president, vice-president and senators cannot be proclaimed because their margin of leads can still be overturned by the total votes in areas where voting would be deferred till eternity by Martial Law. So that this is a GRIM POSSIBILITY.
Patriotically yours,
Toto Causing
gloria is clearly testing our limits. she has it all set up very craftily indeed, and it would seem that we are helpless to stop her. what a predicament. how about, we take a leaf from her book and ourselves resort to extraconstitutional measures before it’s too late.
ampatuan’s army
What happened in Maguindanao is more than a tragedy. It is a moment of insanity.
Condemn it, we must. Understand the circumstances that made this barbarity even remotely possible, we should.
Over the past few days, we have done the round of excoriations. The outrage is justified. The condemnation is well deserved.
This is a massacre whose barbarity rippled across the globe. The rest of the world is not satisfied with the simple explanation that a culture of impunity has evolved in this little corner of humanity. The rest of the world wants to understand why a condition like this one was allowed to persist — a condition where petty provincial rulers were allowed to keep so many men under arms with little control from the state and enforce their own rules of the game in defiance of the rule of law.
When Gibo Teodoro, former defense secretary, was asked in a press conference how something as mind-boggling as this one could even happen, he said the situation in the locality was complex. He could have gone on and on explaining what that means, but that would have required transforming the press briefing into a full-scale seminar on the vulnerabilities of the Philippine state.
True, a culture of impunity has evolved in that locality. True, political patronage has encouraged political warlordism. True, the authorities looked the other way while local tyrants became more abusive by the day.
But let us talk about the complexity as well. That is important, too. It will help us avert a repeat of such gross atrocities as this one.
The standing estimate is that the Ampatuan clan has 800 men (!) under arms. That virtual army is maintained largely at the expense of the state. Government armed and paid allowances to most of these men: a private army operating under the cover of “civilian volunteers” useful for containing the insurgency in the region.
Until this chilling tragedy happened, the authorities found the arrangement concerning “civilian volunteers” a largely functional one. A trade-off was adopted early in the game, many presidencies ago.
Since the AFP did not have enough men and equipment to effectively contain the armed secessionist groups in the area, the “civilian volunteers” functioned as force extenders. In the case of the Maguindanao “civilian volunteers” were very useful. They kept the MILF trapped in the Maranao areas, with the Maguindanao-speaking areas relatively free of insurgents.
There is a price to pay for that: government tacitly condoned warlords who did their best to contribute to suppressing the insurgency. This has been the unspoken arrangement since the days when these “civilian volunteers” were called BSDUs and then CAFGUs.
The “civilian volunteers” in Maguindanao province provided a crucial buffer, keeping the insurgent groups away from the productive plantations, tuna industries and bustling urban economies to the south. The occasional abuses committed by the warlords, until this week, were a small price to pay for the strategic role of keeping the Maguindanao area and those to the south of the province free of insurgency.
In a way, government had little choice. There was not enough money to enlarge the army so that it achieves an effective ratio of superiority over the secessionist guerrilla forces and the isolated communist gangs. “Civilian volunteers” might be a band-aid solution to a strategic vulnerability, but it was the best that could be done.
This is the complex structure of considerations underpinning Gibo Teodoro’s statement that the only way we can get rid of private armies is to enlarge the army. That is a statement made boldly and frankly — even at the risk of many voters failing to get the point.
Gibo Teodoro should know what the complex considerations are. He served an exemplary two years as defense secretary.
The warlords were not about to squander the leverage they enjoyed. They used the private armies to consolidate their local power bases and occasionally pleased their patrons in Manila by delivering votes in their favor. Still, the existence of these private armies is a by-product of a strategic vulnerability of the state, not just the administration.
Until we have enough money to invest in greater military capability to contain a well-armed insurgent movement, we will have to rely on the cheap repressive labor contributed by “civilian volunteers” organized by local warlords.
The Ampatuans are not an idle clan. They understood their leverage and employed it to the hilt. They won sub-Cabinet posts, the governorship of the ARMM, mayoral posts in towns they renamed after their forebears, and the largesse of government projects. They probably ran shady businesses, too, which should explain the great wealth exhibited by clan members. With their leverage, government simply looked the other way and pray nothing too disastrous would come out of this unholy but unavoidable arrangement.
But something truly disastrous has happened. The arrangement will now have to be abrogated. What that means is that the civilian volunteer groups need to be disbanded, the offending local tyrants made to face the full eight of the law and the military, although already thinly spread out, must be redeployed to cover the vacuum.
Andal Ampatuan Jr. will face the music. The outrage is such that this clan has become a political inconvenience. We will now have to find the means to replace the strategic role their private armies played in the counter-insurgency effort.
In the wake of this tragedy, the only guys who have anything to cheer about are the insurgent groups and their allied criminal and terrorist gangs. That is the greatest misfortune of this whole thing.