EDITORIAL - Armed and dangerous

You can see how toothless our gun control laws are when you go to Mindanao, where men caress their guns the way their elders used to caress fighting cocks each morning. When the government forged a peace agreement with the separatist Moro National Liberation Front, the rebels refused to lay down their arms, and the government simply looked the other way. Members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front brandish their heavy weapons at every photo opportunity. The Abu Sayyaf bristled with firearms. And the people they terrorized also kept weapons in self-defense.

But why would members of a religious cult based in Surigao del Norte, far from the haunts of the Abu Sayyaf and Muslim separatists, go around heavily armed? There would have been no bloody confrontation last Tuesday between policemen and members of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association Inc. if the cultists abided by Christian teachings on non-violence. Instead members of the cult led by Ruben Ecleo Jr. reportedly shot it out with the cops who wanted to arrest him for the murder of his wife Alona Bacolod.

On the same night that this confrontation took place, a confirmed member of the cult was in Mandaue City in Cebu, where he murdered Alona’s parents, brother and sister. The killer was himself shot dead. Now there are reports that Ecleo’s followers are out to avenge his fall from grace. The threat is not an empty one, coming from a group that claims a membership of three million, with enough firepower to make any warlord proud.

Why are such groups allowed to build up private arsenals? The answer is politics, which in this country can buy you immunity from laws such as those on gun possession. The Ecleos are among the most influential clans in Surigao, and the cult guarantees the family a solid base of support during elections. Ecleo’s mother Glenda is a congresswoman; he himself once served as town mayor. Even without guns, that vote-rich cult wields power over local government, military and police officials. After Ecleo was accused of murdering his wife, it took nearly five months and a massacre of the wife’s relatives before cops moved in to arrest him.

Before Ecleo’s followers can sow further mayhem, they should be disarmed. You wonder, however, if the Philippine National Police can muster the nerve to do that.