EDITORIAL - Permanent fixture

With the start of the election season, the Philippine National Police intensified its “Oplan Bakal” or campaign against loose firearms. As previous elections have shown, however, the crackdown has never been enough to prevent deadly armed violence.

In many areas of the country, murder has become a favored means of permanently eliminating political rivals. The Maguindanao massacre in November 2009, wherein 58 people were murdered by members of the Ampatuan clan and their private army, was just the worst case of election violence.

Today, with Maguindanao gerrymandered into two provinces, deadly violence continues in the area, although not in the same horrific scale. And candidates aren’t the only ones who are being murdered in this election season.

Last Wednesday morning in Maguindanao del Norte’s Datu Odin Sinsuat town, gunmen on a motorcycle pulled up to a sport utility vehicle traveling along the Cotabato-Shariff Aguak Road and opened fire. The SUV slammed into a tree. Its passengers, who were declared dead upon arrival in a hospital where they were rushed for treatment, were the town’s election officer Bai Maceda Lidasan Abo and her husband Jojo Abo. The gunmen escaped.

The Commission on Elections lamented the attack and said that regardless of the motive, it was considered a case of poll-related violence since it occurred during the election period.

Comelec officials have warned that the violence could still intensify, with the attack being staged two days before the start of the official campaign for local positions. Local races tend to be more heated and prone to armed violence, Comelec officials have observed, as they asked for intensified efforts to curb the proliferation of loose firearms.

Most of the people with the biggest arsenals in this country, however, are politicians in power and with control over the local police. As in the case of the Ampatuans, who controlled the local government in Maguindanao until the massacre, it’s not unusual for members of the police and so-called force multipliers to be part of the private army of the local political warlord.

Murder is the worst way of undermining a free vote, but it is committed with impunity because the perpetrators often get away with the crime. The government is struggling to give justice to former Negros Oriental governor Roel Degamo and the nine other people who were massacred at his home in Pamplona in March 2023, with the accused mastermind, expelled congressman Arnolfo Teves, enjoying freedom in Timor-Leste.

As long as people can see that crime goes unpunished, murder will continue to be a favored tool for eliminating political rivals. Combined with the insufficiency of efforts to stop the proliferation of loose firearms, deadly violence will be a permanent fixture in Philippine elections.