"Coordination" is a wrong word to use

At the outset, let me greet the brain behind the revival of The Freeman, Dr. Jose R. Gullas, a happy birthday. I was in high school when Sir Dodong, drawing from a hearty preference for publication, funneled his own huge financial resources to give a new life to this paper after an extended period when founder Paulino Gullas decided to cease publishing it. Yes, happy birthday, Sir Dodong.

From the many angles with which the Mamasapano incident has been meticulously studied, the word "coordination" seems to hold the key towards understanding how it happened. More precisely, it is the reported lack of coordination that led to the brutal killing (others call it massacre) of 44 members of the elite Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police. At least, this is the suggestion of our country's many decision makers.

In the initial flow of reports about the incident, high military officials, for one, tended to replicate the act of Pontius Pilate. It was not enough that they spoke under the cloak of anonymity. As unnamed sources, they hesitated to let us peek into what they knew really took place in a virtual field of massacre. Incredibly, they would not admit any form of responsibility for the mass murder. Claiming that the police officers who might have organized the force did not coordinate with them, they would like the Filipino people to believe that they could not come to help the policemen who were pinned to imminent death. They came short of saying "miresi!"

And so, no matter how absurd it sounded, this was the initial line of justification. The refusal of the army to bring relief to beleaguered policemen was grounded on the failure of the latter to coordinate with the former. In other words, had the superiors of the SAF (and I am referring to the high officials who sent the hapless policemen to a mission of certain death) coordinated with the military commanders near the Mamasapano area, either the one-sided battle could have been avoided or they could have fought by the policemen's side in the furious war that had to be waged, and perhaps equalized the battle equation.

Then the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (and later the BIFF) seized a window of opportunity and happily jumped into the wagon. Its leaders were heard saying that the policemen did not "coordinate" with them. Their pronouncement was short of saying the obvious – that the policemen did not get their permission to enter their "territory." That was why they should be punished with death!

His Excellency, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, eventually admitted that he knew about the operation and covered his track with the alleged failure of the SAF superiors to "coordinate." I use the word eventually here because it took him his sweet time to acknowledge being informed prior to the launch of the police action. Why his delayed reaction? I do not know.

What I pretend to know is that coordination is inappropriate. It is not correct to use it. My little understanding of political law cannot support the view that our president and the Philippine National Police needed to "coordinate" with anyone in order to enforce a legal order. In the words of former chief justice Enrique Fernando, there "is nothing better settled than that the Philippines, being independent and sovereign, its authority may be exercised over its entire domain."

We were told that there were warrants for the arrest of one Zulkipli bin Hir alias Marwan and Basit Usman. Such warrants were duly issued by the competent courts. They could be served throughout the entire Philippine archipelago. Any peace officer from Y'Ami, our northernmost island, to the Turtle Islands in the south can effect the arrest without asking permission from anyone, like the MILF or BIFF because to quote Fernando again, "there is no portion of our territory (like Mamasapano), that is beyond (our state's) power."

President Aquino, whom I always see speak from the prompter rather than from his heart, knows that within Philippine territory, our decrees are supreme such that there is no need to ask the permission, "coordination, as they use it," of MILF or BIFF to serve the warrants of Warman and Usman's arrest. Or, if he feels the necessity of coordination, God help the Philippines!