GMA’s new focus

Peace and order, according to President Arroyo, will be her next priority after putting her economic house in order. There are Filipinos who will dispute that their financial situation is now in order. There are people who are giving up home air-conditioning for the first time because of the crippling purchased power adjustment or PPA.

But I’m willing to go along with President GMA’s rosy assessment of the economy if only to make her focus more on peace and order, which is in fact hobbling economic growth. If this problem persists, the candidate perceived to be the most effective in restoring peace and order will be president of the Philippines come 2004.

Tsinoys, the favorite targets of kidnappers, are hailing the appointment of Deputy Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. as Philippine National Police chief. President GMA has given Ebdane a year to neutralize kidnappers. Ebdane, unfortunately, is off to an inauspicious start with the escape of Pentagon Gang leader Faisal Marohombsar and two of his cohorts.

Marohombsar quickly touched base with his contacts in the press, telling several Mindanao-based journalists by cell phone yesterday that he was back in the southern Philippines after taking a Davao-bound flight Wednesday in Manila. Marohombsar said he and his cohorts escaped at around 2 a.m. from the detention center of the National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force at Camp Crame, headquarters of the PNP. He would not give further details.

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Ebdane, as everyone knows, heads the task force. The NAKTAF detention area was supposed to be under the tight watch of the PNP’s elite Special Action Force. Well, the elite unit just got sacked yesterday. Suddenly I’m apprehensive about Moro National Liberation Front chairman Nur Misuari, who’s being held in a supposedly maximum security compound at the SAF headquarters in Laguna.

Meanwhile, Ebdane griped that he smelled sabotage. You’ll just have to get used to sabotage, dear general, if you want to survive in the Crame snake pit.

President GMA, however, can’t afford to just get used to that state of affairs in the PNP. She should read the riot act to her police generals: Either they’re with her campaign against criminality, or they’re against her (with apologies to George W), which means they’ll have to learn to work with Ebdane.

Apart from the power play in the police, her problem is that at least one of Ebdane’s rivals for the top PNP post keeps boasting about his closeness to Malacañang, and there are many people who actually believe him. The buzz is that the officer is into jueteng, with the proceeds going to the President’s campaign war chest for 2004. The uglier buzz is that he’s poking his nose into carjacking and kidnapping. How will Ebdane deal with this one?

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Our cops can’t catch, keep, prosecute or convict the bad guys. They’re also powerless against private armies and violent cults, especially when the cults become enmeshed in politics.

How else can you explain how Ruben Ecleo Jr. managed to survive for so long with his armed followers, despite stories of drug use and sexual abuse? The Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association Inc. was started in 1965 by the brothers Moises and Ruben Ecleo Sr., father of Ecleo Jr. Wealth and the cult following turned the clan into a major political force in Surigao del Norte, where Moises served as governor, Ruben Sr. served as town mayor and his wife Glenda as congresswoman. Ecleo Jr. himself served as mayor of San Jose town.

You don’t mess around with a clan like that. A cop looks the other way when he sees "Divine Master" Ecleo Jr. strutting around the province with heavily armed bodyguards, who could be any member of the cult. The only people who get arrested in this country for illegal gun possession are potential shakedown victims and action star Robin Padilla.

Private armies and politically connected cults can become so powerful they won’t hesitate to commit murder or engage lawmen in a shootout. How will President GMA deal with this kind of lawlessness?

By the time cops arrested Ecleo Jr. Wednesday for the death of his wife Alona last January, her brother — the only witness to her murder — had himself been killed together with their sister and parents in Cebu. The gunman, who was shot dead by cops, was identified as a cult member.

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Looking at the images of Ecleo Jr., you wonder how someone who looks like convicted priest killer Norberto Manero can sell salvation to anyone. Ecleo has reportedly tested positive for shabu and allegedly subjects his young followers to sexual abuse. This, in a cult that’s also supposed to worship Jesus Christ.

Then again, we have a long history of groups that blend superstition with Christian doctrine. The PBMA members who were killed thinking their cult amulets made them invincible to bullets were not the first of their kind. Historical records show that during the Philippine-American war that started in 1899, some members of the ragtag Philippine Army met American bullets head on, believing in their amulets as they walked calmly toward the enemy. Of course they were all cut down.

Ecleo — both Senior and Junior — enticed recruits with faith healing and teachings about clean living, which the younger Ecleo appears not to have followed.

In other countries they call it voodoo; here some people call it Christianity. A Catholic priest lamented yesterday that they had tried to stop people in Surigao from joining Ecleo’s cult. To the undereducated and miseducated, however, there’s not much difference between cults and the religion from which they sprung.

And the cults have an edge. While the Roman Catholic faith promises eternal salvation after death, the cults hold the promise of instant gratification in this life: employment and livelihood assistance, freedom from illness, protection from neighborhood bullies and criminals.

What the Church and the government — including the police — can’t deliver, people find in some cults. And we have millions of people waiting for such deliverance. I can believe Surigao politicians when they say that "Divine Master" Ecleo was well loved by his flock.

If you have no faith in your government and police, it’s easy to believe in a Divine Master and his amulets.