PGMA ought to play instant legal magician. She can issue Proclamation Order No. 1946 right after a cabinet meeting arguing as she did of an ‘urgent need to prevent and suppress the occurrence of several other incidents of lawless violence’.
The AFP chief of staff is accordingly directed to carry out her orders within the bounds of the Constitution and there is only her to lift or withdraw the proclamation. Thus, a military action is expected to be employed against the perpetrators of this dastardly act. Thus, GMA believes this effort will bring justice to the victims and the perpetrators held accountable to the full limit of the law.
To this end, GMA likewise ordered an investigation in the massacre by the police, military, and the NBI and apparently, even the Commission on Human Rights has been asked to join the probe.
Media accounts point to a political angle in this unfortunate incident said to be the worst political massacre in history and Malacanang proves quick to the draw by parring all these insinuations as blurring what could turn out to be the factual account. GMA’s political adviser claims he met with the ARMM governor Zaldy Ampatuan when the killings occurred precisely to mediate in the long-running rivalry between the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus. What gave?
Meanwhile, we have 46 bodies retrieved from mass graves, 21 of them women – so far. Possibly, some may have escaped and have yet to be rescued or found. Uncannily, resigned defense secretary Gibo Teodoro is quick to assail that the Ampatuans ‘must be arrested because he has something to do with it’.
Against this backdrop, one can conclude that the Fourth Estate can never serve as canon fodder for political families. Political allies or political rivals – the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus – the body of evidence
should speak what the crime all was after every possible angle would have been validated.
With Maguindanao under the state of emergency, is it not possible that one presidential adviser will weave more threads to the cloth? What does the new defense secretary have in mind as these lawless acts of violence stare us to the face?
The chair of CHR has the best thing said: “This is the work of someone who is not human. It is a bestial act of the highest order. I have never seen anything like it. It’s brutal ruthlessness all in the name of power. It’s an affront to all forms of civility.”
This massacre forebodes of more evil to come, pray not.
Popularity: 1% [?]
The case is being dragged by the government. They dont want to
touch the people involved in the massacre. They are HOLY COWS.
On the other hand, more than forty people were already murdered
like what Saddam Husseins did to the Iraqui Shiites.
This is also a lesson to the Media. People in power will kill you. If you are with their opponents. So, be careful from now on…
I’m glad the HRC is on it. They are one of the few government agencies that, albeit, swimming up river, does it with head high.
Joe
The chair of the Commission on Human Rights appears to have mastered the art of self-expression giving as she does each time around what hears like ‘very good sound bites’ – emotion, worldview, and all.
What escapes knowledge is the CHR’s record of achievements in the area of human rights advocacy. Hardly anyone knows the ‘final report’ in any of those controversial human rights cases that were under their cognizance.
As they say, ‘first impression lasts’. I don’t know. I hope I am able to talk to one of the directors of CHR which is a former classmate in college one of these days just to know how CHR is really doing in its field of work.
Then I will come back to you Joe and assure you, things are working, if they are.
No less than the Secretary of the Department of Justice has to sort of accost Mayor Ampatuan from GenSan to Manila on a PAF fokker plane (was it?)for ‘deposit’ to the NBI, what kind of Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees is that? Who should be the last to violate Republic Act 6713?
Come to think of it, Presidential Adviser Dureza even has to meet Mayor Ampatuan personally in his residence and fly him from that point to GenSan on board a military chopper. Again, what kind of brazen indecency was that?
The next time a criminal is to be arrested, we should expect a Dureza and a DOJ secretary to bring him at the doorstep of a court of law.
Primer,
Right. In handcuffs, too, please. A common man suspected of getting in a bar fight will be carted off bound in the humiliation of cuffs, but a suspected mass murderer, a butcher, gets an arm-in-arm escort, wearing an “in your face” war bonnet as if he were the star, and others were kissing his derriere.
They do, I suppose . . .
Joe