Permanent fixture

What is it about elective office that people are ready to cheat, steal and even kill for it?

The violence is at its worst, it seems, in the local races. From the congressional to the barangay level, incumbent officials, bets seeking re-election and new candidates are being gunned down together with their bodyguards and supporters. Anyone can get killed in the crossfire, including children and the elderly.

One can understand why certain people would commit murder for a seat in the House of Representatives. Apart from the multimillion-peso pork barrel and the many other perks enjoyed by a congressman, there’s even bigger money to be made from lobbying for special interests. It’s a lucrative career that any self-respecting patriarch would want to hand down to his children, so that in time generations of his progeny would come to regard political power as a birthright.

But committing murder over barangay positions? Many barangay officials tool around in pedicabs. Yet two barangay chairmen and a councilman were shot dead yesterday in separate incidents around the country.

Foreigners often ask me why we Filipinos, who take pride in being friendly, hospitable and God-fearing, can commit murder with such impunity, especially over positions with a term of office of only three years.

I can think of three reasons.

One is that the murderers expect to get away with it. This is a failure of law enforcement.

Another is that the murderers don’t believe they will need to make a future accounting to their Maker. This is a failure of spiritual shepherding.

The third is that there are so few opportunities for making good money in this developing country that it is relatively easy to find hired guns.

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Life is cheap in this country. Just ask Juan Dontugan, who has admitted killing American Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell accidentally when he had intended to attack a neighborhood bully.

When he was presented to the press the other day, Dontugan looked pathetically contrite. Gone was the rage that drove him to kill, and then bury the body in such a rush he left Campbell’s feet sticking out of her makeshift grave, like a red flag to alert those looking for her.

I have been to Banaue several times over the years and have always recommended it to foreign visitors as a must-see, telling them it’s uniquely lovely and safe.

When news of Campbell’s disappearance broke, I thought she might have fallen off a cliff or, horrors, become a python’s lunch. I couldn’t believe the friendly people of Banaue could attack a tourist.

When he was forced by cops to face the press the other day (where are the defenders of suspects’ rights?), Dontugan looked like a scared, harmless Banaue woodcarver.

I’ve spent enough years in the crime beat to know that the most cold-blooded murderer can look scared, pathetically contrite and harmless when caught.

That doesn’t lessen my disappointment in having my image of the friendly, peaceful Ifugao shattered by Dontugan.

How does our society breed the urge to kill, or the ruthlessness to have critics and political rivals murdered?

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Dontugan at least maintains that he had not meant to kill.

Our politicians, many with better education than a woodcarver, deliberately plan the execution of their enemies: media critics, left-wing militants, political rivals together with their supporters and relatives.

Dontugan went into hiding for several days, but obviously he believed the law would eventually catch up with him.

Many of our political warlords are the opposite: they know, because they control the criminal justice system in their respective fiefdoms, that they can get away with murder.

If the people in charge of investigating, prosecuting and trying a murder case are virtually in the payroll of a politician, he never has to worry about getting caught.

Murderers who don’t control the police can intimidate witnesses. Even in the United States, funding for witness protection programs is never enough. Unless the government can guarantee the safety of witnesses in unexplained and election-related murders, few people would be willing to risk their necks by becoming embroiled in political feuds.

Witnesses can be intimidated. They can also be bought, snatched from the other side and made to recant incriminating statements. We have seen this happen in several recent political scandals.

Witnesses can also be manufactured to clear a murder mastermind. Those who see murder as just another convenient political tool believe that everyone has a price: an assassin, witnesses, fake witnesses, cops, prosecutors and judges. To the nation’s misfortune, the murder masterminds are often right.

Our predominantly Catholic society could appeal to the conscience of these murder brains. But these sheep left the flock ages ago. They’re not scared of the law, and they’re not going to be scared of warnings about eternal damnation.

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They also have the capability to detect people with an inner murderer waiting to be unleashed.

In recent years we have seen people killed over parking space and traffic altercations. So many people have been killed for singing Frank Sinatra’s "My Way" the wrong way in karaoke bars that such stories have become a joke.

Eradicating that pent-up murderous rage and cultivating a conscience among people is the job of the nation’s spiritual leaders, a number of whom, unfortunately, are neck-deep in politics and have neglected their main mission.

Punishing those who inflict their deadly rage on others is the job of the government, which, unfortunately, has made little progress in ending political violence.

Seeing others get away with murder guarantees more violence — before, during, and long after the elections. Murder has become a permanent fixture in Philippine politics.