Impunity

As gruesome details of the Maguindanao massacre trickled out in November 2009, even jaded senior journalists were shocked. A common question in our newsroom was, did the perpetrators actually believe they could get away with such an atrocity?

Obviously, they did.

And obviously, it was a belief born of experience. Many other murders, although none on the scale of the massacre, were attributed to the Ampatuan clan in the decade when it ruled the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao like a fiefdom.

Decapitation, we were told, was a trademark of the clan’s trigger-happy members. It was said that they were at their most brutal when high on drugs – said to be another source of the clan’s unexplained wealth.

The brutality and readiness to execute enemies of the clan – and by extension, enemies of the ARMM government – gave the Ampatuans absolute control of the election process in their fiefdom, allowing them (like the religious mafia) to guarantee results. National officials and political parties wooed the Ampatuans for support during elections.

Combining this election clout with the guarantee that the clan could keep ARMM troublemakers in check, including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Ampatuans enjoyed the support of imperial Manila. Those crates of guns and ammunition with defense department markings, which were found in the Ampatuan compounds after the massacre, were not stolen by the clan from government armories; the compounds served as the government armories, with the weapons distributed to cops, soldiers, and so-called force multipliers.

All those forces were legitimate employees of Juan and Juana de la Cruz, authorized to bear arms in their task of keeping the public safe. Their principal task, of course, was keeping the ARMM officials safe. Almost all the officials happened to be members of the same ruling clan, so the government security forces functioned as a private army.

On Nov. 23, 2009, members of that private army – estimates of their number range from 200 to 300 – waylaid a convoy bearing relatives of a political opponent of the Ampatuans, with journalists tagging along to cover a daring challenge to the powerful clan.

Thanks to communication technology, some of the journalists managed to make frantic, heartbreaking calls on their mobile phones, asking for help and describing the approach of their executioners. That was how the nation first got wind of the massacre on a hilltop in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao.

When the grisly details emerged, people kept asking incredulously: what were the Ampatuans thinking?

Obviously, that they could get away with it.

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How many other politicians, with a stranglehold on their fiefdoms, have the same mindset?

The massacre is routinely described as the worst case of election violence in this country, and the worst attack on journalists anywhere in the world.

But everyone knows it wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last. We cannot even rule out at this point that something as heinous, and with even more fatalities, may occur.

This is because the circumstances that created the Ampatuans are still in place in several parts of the country. And if a weak criminal justice system allows them to get away with it, the possibility of more massacres increases.

The killings did not stop with the massacre. About 100 suspects remain free, and the Ampatuans still have enormous resources. Only last Tuesday, the driver of Andal Ampatuan Jr. was killed and his companion, said to be a former Ampatuan bagman, was seriously wounded in an ambush as they were heading for a meeting with prosecutors to tell their story. Dennis Sakal was the fourth witness in the massacre to be assassinated.

Murdering witnesses is usually Phase 2 of any operation to permanently silence a political opponent, critical journalist or pesky left-wing activist. Children and the elderly are not spared.

In the wake of the massacre, there have been proposals to dismantle the force multipliers. Since martial law, numerous human rights abuses have been attributed to civilian militias organized by the government. The paramilitary units have been given so many names I’ve lost track of the latest incarnation.

But even President Aquino, at the start of his term, said the armed militias served a purpose particularly in conflict zones where regular military and police forces need augmentation. The force multipliers are still around.

And so are the politicians who utilize them as virtual private armies.

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The world is watching the massacre case closely, and so far the overwhelmingly impression is one of dismay over the pace of Philippine justice.

This weakness, as the government has been reminded repeatedly, breeds impunity. There has been no mass murder on the same scale as the one in Maguindanao, but political assassinations and journalist killings have continued since then.

At the rate the wheels of Philippine justice crawl along, a politician who wants a rival permanently out of his way will believe the risk is worth it. In the rare instance that the triggerman is caught and implicates the mastermind and the case is resolved, the politician would have finished serving his term – or even three consecutive terms – in the contested office. The politician may not even live long enough for judgment to be rendered in the murder case.

Getting away with murder can be habit-forming. After a few victims, what’s 10 more? What’s 58? There’s a backhoe to put them in a mass grave.

If a government official uses murder as a political tool often enough, as the Ampatuans are believed to have done, then another massacre on the same scale as the one in Maguindanao is not farfetched.

Under fire for the snail-paced progress in the massacre case, the government says that the system is overwhelmed. Let’s hope this doesn’t give kindred spirits of the Ampatuans the wrong ideas. In the campaign against corruption, the small fry are dismissed from government and quickly tossed behind bars for embezzling five-figure amounts. On the other hand, the big fish who pocket billions are elected to high office and called honorable.

In the case of political violence, there are surely those who continue to be inspired by the Ampatuans, believing that the more overwhelmingly shocking the crime, the easier it is to get away with it. They have the guns, weak institutions and broken systems to protect them.

Somewhere in the country’s numerous political fiefdoms, there’s another massacre waiting to happen.