FVR, Miriam: P-Noy to blame for SAF-44

Bitter foes Fidel Ramos and Miriam Defensor Santiago never sit in the same room. Yet the two most experienced of Filipino politicians agree on one thing about the Mamasapano massacre. That is, that blame for the Moro separatist wipeout of 44 police commandos does not rest on their general Getulio Napeñas alone. Nor does it end with suspended National Police chief Alan Purisima’s meddling in the commando operation.

Answerability goes all the way up to President Noynoy Aquino. No amount of dodging by him, his spokesmen, and Congress allies who feign as investigators will hide it.

Ramos and Santiago separately explain that P-Noy gave the go-signal to the commando raid as Commander-in-Chief of both the Armed Forces and the National Police. That makes him responsible for it as the highest officer. The Jan. 25 operation was known only to Napeñas, Purisima, P-Noy, and one other PNP officer, intelligence Chief Supt. Fernando Mendez.

Ramos and Santiago pooh-pooh the claim that P-Noy left the direct chain of command after being briefed about the mission for the past four years. The Secretaries of Interior and of Defense, the PNP officer-in-charge, and the AFP chief were kept out of the loop. Investigations have so far avoided the matter of who funded the operation that involved 392 men from the PNP-Special Action Force. Napeñas has stated in a Senate hearing only that it cost more than P100,000. Yet it must have run to the tens of millions, since new weapons, communications gear, and transport were issued to the SAF for the operation.

The raiders succeeded in killing international terrorist Marwan, but Moro separatists ambushed them as they exfiltrated from the barrio. Aside from 44 killed, the SAF suffered 16 wounded. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, with which the government is supposed to have a truce, lost 18 men. At least four civilians, two of them pre-teens, perished in the crossfire, and 600 families fled their homes and farms.

Imperiled is the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law, under which the MILF would rule an expanded Muslim autonomous region in Mindanao. Christian and Muslim Filipinos alike are incensed by videos posted on social media of men with short arms, likely from the MILF, finishing off the wounded commandos with shots to the head. Two questions have arisen: Why is the Aquino admin negotiating at all with the barbaric MILF, which harbors terrorists in its controlled barrios? What reign of terror will the MILF impose in the Bangsamoro substate?

P-Noy’s are no paltry blamers. Ramos had served in the army and ran the Constabulary-Integrated National Police for four decades before becoming Secretary of Defense in 1988 and President in 1992. He cofounded the SAF, which played a pivotal role in the civilian-backed military uprising that toppled dictator Marcos in 1986.

Three-term senator Santiago had served as trial court judge, then immigration chief and Secretary of Agrarian Reform. In 1997 she was adjudged one of the world’s 100 most influential women.

Contenders for President in 1992 at the end of the term of P-Noy’s mother President Cory Aquino, Ramos and Defensor owe him no political favors. It can be said that it’s he who could have picked up a lesson or two from them before, during, and after they served his mother’s Cabinet.

Napeñas initially had taken full responsibility for the debacle. At the start of the Senate inquiry he even called as his “personal judgment call” his heeding of Purisima’s “mere advice” to not inform PNP acting chief Leonardo Espina and Interior Sec. Mar Roxas about the operation. At the House of Reps hearing, however, he swore that the meddling by the suspended Purisima had botched the operation.

Purisima has admitted to telling Napeñas to keep Espina and Roxas out of the loop while he takes care of informing AFP chief Gen. Gregorio Catapang. That was after Napeñas and Mendez, on his arrangement, briefed P-Noy about the forthcoming raid on Jan. 9, one month into his six-month suspension while under probe for corruption. Purisima also has confessed to telling Catapang of it only when the SAF was already in the thick of battle with the MILF. He refused to answer questions on whether P-Noy knew of his telling Napeñas about cutting out the immediate superiors, and if he reported the massacre to him in the morning of Jan. 25.

Catapang and Roxas were with P-Noy in Zamboanga City when the fighting was raging in Mamasapano. They said they received sporadic reports since early morning, but informed P-Noy about it only at 3 p.m., and held a formal briefing at 5 p.m. By then the fighting had ceased, and the body count was starting.

From text exchanges of military field generals, it appeared that P-Noy feebly had ordered a “best effort” reinforcement of the encircled commandos, not a “rescue at all costs.” The order was interpreted as a “resupply of ammo and food for the night” not “rescue” or “extrication” from the line of fire. Before dusk nine commandos from the 37-man assault force, and 35 of the 36-man backup had been killed.

Motions to summon P-Noy to Congress to answer questions have been quashed. The Senate abruptly ended its public hearings last Thursday, and will hold only one executive session today – but only if Purisima is able to get clearance from P-Noy to divulge what their conversations about the operation. The House will hold public hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, without P-Noy.

Attempts by newsmen to get answers from Malacañang have been thwarted. Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda called “malicious” any questions about P-Noy being in Zamboanga on Jan. 25 other than to inspect a terrorist car-bombing site. Press Sec. has referred questions about P-Noy’s idea of reinforcements to the Congress hearings that gingerly avoid it, and to the PNP board of inquiry that has no jurisdiction over it.

P-Noy has said he would carry the memory of the “SAF-44” to his last days. Outraged Filipinos would make sure of that, it seems. Santiago has confirmed the existence of a coup d’état plot. Another senator, who had led a failed military mutiny in 2003, has lumped the coup plotters with open civilian critics of P-Noy.

Yet the civilians disavow association with violent plots. One is a group led by ex-politicians and five Catholic bishops, called National Transformation Council, which called for P-Noy’s resignation as far back as November. Another is the “2.22.15 Coalition,” consisting of Netizens against political dynasties, congressional and presidential pork barrels, and dubious voting machines, who will hold a protest rally at the EDSA Shrine on Feb. 22, the first of the four-day anniversary observance of the 1986 People Power Revolt.

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