EDITORIAL - Firepower

Boxes of ammunition were hidden behind mansion walls. More boxes of ammunition were found buried together with high-powered guns. As relatives and friends buried yesterday several of the 30 media workers slaughtered in Maguindanao, a composite team of military and police personnel raided some of the homes of the Ampatuan clan. The raiders were heavily armed and wore flak vests, as if headed for battle, and rightly so; the subjects of the raids yielded enough weapons and ammunition to arm an entire battalion, according to the Philippine National Police.

In fact the weapons and ammunition appear to have been meant for a military battalion; they bore markings of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Department of National Defense. Boxes of 5.56mm rifle ammunition were marked “GOVT ARSENAL DND.” An armored vehicle, marked “pulisya,” was not PNP property, according to police officials.

In Maguindanao and the rest of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, there is no dividing line between government and private property. Authorities must determine how and where those weapons and ammunition were obtained by the Ampatuans — the only ones in the ARMM with the power to build up that kind of arsenal.

Even if local officials were allowed by President Arroyo, through her Executive Order 546 in July 2006, to organize militias as “force multipliers” against rebels, what became known as the civilian volunteer organizations were not supposed to have greater firepower than the regular AFP. Over the years the Ampatuans virtually created their own armed forces, fully equipped and heavily armed with what appear to be government supplies, while the regular AFP remained one of the most poorly equipped in the region.

How many other clans have similar arsenals, built up at taxpayers’ expense with the blessings of Malacañang ostensibly in the name of national security? It doesn’t take long for anyone with control over such militias and weaponry to feel that he is above the law, that activities such as smuggling and jueteng are illegal only if he says so. That kind of impunity has led to the murders of hundreds of militant activists and journalists since 1986. The Maguindanao massacre is only the worst of the cases. As long as private armed groups exist, controlled by warlord clans, the massacre could happen again.