Indecisive

I know I have written this line before: this thing would have been funny if it were not so tragic.

The first time I used that line was in the aftermath of the Luneta hostage fiasco. Now I use it to describe the Zamboanga fiasco that has carried on for over a week now.

There are notable differences between the two events, to be sure.

At the Luneta, there was just one hostage taker. He was visible to the police all throughout the long drama. No sniper took him out before innocent lives could be lost because no one gave the decisive order. While the police improvised from minute to minute, the local crisis committee failed to take control of the situation. There was no effective locus of command for the various law enforcement units attempting to free the hostages.

At Zamboanga City, all the responsibility for handling the situation was given to the local crisis committee headed by the mayor. National officials, very likely with the Luneta tragedy at the back of their minds, insisted in keeping the matter in the hands of the local crisis committee. Keeping with that posture, even the AFP officers at the frontline constantly insisted that they take orders from Mayor Beng Climaco.

While all the major national government officials flew to Zamboanga City, none of them took command (and hence, responsibility) for the developing situation. They merely loitered in the safer parts of the city, trying very hard to look busy by handing out relief goods to the evacuees.

DILG Secretary Mar Roxas was in Zamboanga on Day One, although he basically confined himself to attending the press briefings, doing the usual photo-ops at the evacuation centers and being available around-the-clock for phone-patch interviews with the media. DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman was soon at the scene of siege, basically assuring anyone who cared to ask that there was enough instant noodles for everybody.

After several days of bloody urban warfare, President Aquino finally materialized at the battered city. In what was presumably the safest part of the city, he assembled the troops and handed them boxes with rather odd contents: sports drinks, multivitamins and phone cards.

These were surely not useless items, although it did not occur to the President to ask why, after all these years, the AFP did not have standard combat rations. At about the time he was distributing phone cards to the troops, we saw video clips of soldiers at the frontline eating rice from banana leaves and basically subsisting on boiled eggs donated by residents.

The standard procedure in the AFP, when troops are sent out to battle, is for their commanders to carry cash for purchasing food along the way. This “conversion” system, so vulnerable to corruption, may also be the reason the AFP never bothered to evolve a healthy combat rations system.

Former President Joseph Estrada, after he ordered “all-out war” during his time, at least had the sympathy to bring with him roast suckling pig and generous amounts of beer for the (presumably Christian) troops. The former president’s gifts were, of course, consumed right beside the damaged mosque at Camp Abubakar, the better to desecrate it.

All the while, as the nation’s highest officials trooped for their photo-op moments at Zamboanga, Mayor Beng Climaco was pleading that a state of emergency be declared. She kept repeating this was a crisis of international proportions, way beyond her capacities as mere city mayor.

This has been, to be sure, an incident that required some exercise of diplomacy to resolve as well as a clear policy direction from the top. By declaring a state of emergency, government may commandeer resources necessary to do battle, forcibly evacuate residents used as human shields by the rebels and impress upon the MNLF government’s determination to crush this stupid adventure.

By declaring a state of emergency, however, the entire bloody matter will fall into President Aquino’s hands. He will have to assume responsibility for whatever outcome might be in store.

The President, it is clear, was not disposed to take decisive responsibility for the matter of ridding a major city of almost 200 battle-hardened MNLF fighters. He had done his part distributing candies, Gatorade and pre-paid phone cards to the troops.

If this thing ends up a complete fiasco, there will at least be Mayor Beng Climaco to blame — never mind that she had no military training whatsoever and definitely no exposure to the finer points of international diplomacy. Never mind that she has her hands full trying to feed 60,000 evacuees straining her city’s resources.

Meanwhile, Indonesia cancelled a conference on the 1996 “final” peace agreement signed by the Philippine government with the MNLF. Indonesia, just to emphasize, acts on behalf of the powerful OIC that collectively guarantees this agreement our present crop of peace negotiators find convenient to ignore.

Even as President Aquino prefers to stay away from the line of command and control, he apparently maintains an unarticulated policy on the Zamboanga situation. Over the weekend, Vice President Jejomar Binay managed to get to Nur Misuari on the phone. The MNLF chairman gave a rather predictable condition for a ceasefire: he wants safe passage for his trapped fighters in the city.

By most accounts, Binay brought the matter up with Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin. The secretary immediately responded that the President would not approve of that. So the President has the final say after all.

No safe passage, no ceasefire. If there is no ceasefire, the troops will have to battle every inch of the way to recover lost territory until all the MNLF contingent is killed or captured. This is the only scenario left.