EDITORIAL - It was good gov't didn't just kick in the door

Now that the government has in custody Datu Unsay, Maguindanao mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., the prime suspect in last Monday’s massacre of dozens of people in the country’s worst political crime in many years, we have finally won for ourselves some time for clearer perspective.

For in the days following the ghastly crime and leading up to the surrender of Ampatuan and the disarming of his clan’s private army, everyone had been so enraged by the incident nobody would have complained if the government just went in and annihilated every last Ampatuan.

Indeed, everyone threw everything but the kitchen sink at the president, accusing her of not acting swiftly enough to bring the Ampatuans to justice. But it was precisely because of justice that the government just cannot do what the mob had demanded.

If the president had cut corners just because it was the popular thing to do, justice would have been prostituted, and her enemies would still have flogged her for it. That is the difficulty of being president. You need to look at the forest, not just at a few trees.

One simple sign that everyone had joined the Pied Piper in a mad dash to the river is the complete failure of everyone to notice the little things in the sidelines, such as what is the real spelling of the first name of the vice mayor of Buluan, Maguindanao.

Vice Mayor Mangudadatu had his name variously spelled as Ismael and Esmael. Which is which, really? And to think the whole thing started with him. Mangudadatu’s desire to wrest the governorship of Maguindanao from the father of Ampatuan triggered the wholesale murder.

Fearing for his life, Mangudadatu sent his wife and two sisters, plus two female lawyers and a platoon of journalists as security cover, to file his certificate of candidacy. As the whole world knows by now, none of them reached their destination.

The point is, if nobody cared to find out a very elemental thing such as what the real name is of one of the lead characters in this sordid tale, then nobody probably cared about how the whole thing would turn out, for as long as we can lay our hands on the killers.

Okay, that is good to quench our thirst for vengeance, to soothe our razzled nerves and cool down our passions. And then what? Would everything still have been okay if we just kicked in the door and fired. Would we have been willing to pay the price for blind rage?