It will be noted that Sec. 26, Article II (Sate Policies), of the 1987 Constitution commands the legislature thus: “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law”.
This is one clear constitutional mandate that the wealthy elites in the Philippine Congress and in the Executive have intentionally and brazenly ignored to perpetuate their socio-economic class in power, hence, rendering the spirit of the Philippine Revolution of 1896 and of the EDSA I People Power Movement utterly inutile and useless and making a big joke out of Philippine democracy.
For instance, in the coming 2010 general Philippine elections, we see only the rich, the famous, the fabulous, and the well-connected in the list of presidential, senatorial, congressional and local governmental candidates, e.g., Villar, Aquino, Cojuangco, Roxas, and other traditional local and national politicians-businessmen whose main intent is to protect their huge business conglomerates and advance their vested economic interests and hidden political agenda rather than to truly and genuinely liberate and free the hapless Filipino masses from extreme suffering, hopelessness, poverty, disease, ignorance, and disunity.
May I share below a column of Neal Cruz and the editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in this respect.
As I See It
Day of mourning won’t bring victims back to life
By Neal Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:38:00 11/27/2009
The massacre in Maguindanao could have been averted had Congress passed a law implementing the constitutional provision against political dynasties. The Constitutional Commission that drafted the Constitution made a mistake by adding the clause “subject to an enabling law” to the anti-dynasty provision. They should have made that provision self-implementing. For who is the senator or congressman who would file a bill when many of our legislators are themselves members of family dynasties? A bill like that does not have a ghost of a chance of hurdling Congress which is dominated by family dynasties.
How could a law against family dynasties have prevented the Maguindanao massacre? Because such a law, if strictly enforced, could have prevented “warlordism.” Since 2001, Maguindanao has been ruled by two warlord clans: the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus. Today siblings, children, grandchildren, in-laws and other relatives are officials of the provincial and municipal governments. As the Inquirer list last Wednesday showed, the Ampatuan dynasty has 16 officials in the LGUs: 2 congressmen, 2 governors, 1 vice governor, 3 provincial board members, 8 mayors, and 2 vice mayors. The Mangudadatu dynasty, on the other hand, has 6 LGU officials: 1 congressman, 1 governor, 2 mayors, and 2 vice mayors.
The two families used to be political allies, both allies of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, both members of the administration Lakas-Kampi-CMD Party.
The Ampatuans made Arroyo win by a landslide in the 2004 elections. The opposition got zero votes in many Maguindanao municipalities. There are unconfirmed reports that Arroyo had Virgilio Garcillano of the “Hello, Garci” tape hidden by the Ampatuans at the height of the scandal. That is why Garci could not be found when there was supposed to be a widespread search for him in Mindanao.
And that is why Malacañang is reportedly treating the Ampatuans with kid gloves now? They reportedly know so many things about the election where Arroyo won by a landslide. Try to bring them to the bar of justice and they might sing their heads off. That is why the national government is treading softly and slowly. It’s buying time, both for itself and the Ampatuans, until they have concocted a credible story on who was behind the massacre. Probable scapegoats: a “lost command” of the MILF, or members of the Abu Sayyaf.
But making up a credible story would be difficult. The evidence against the Ampatuans, although circumstantial, are damning. Circumstantial because there are no witnesses—the killers made sure of that. Everybody in the Mangudadatu convoy was massacred. That is why more than a dozen media men were not spared. They would have been witnesses. Even innocent civilians just passing through were murdered. Dead men tell no tales. Even the vehicles they were riding in were buried with the corpses. They would have done the same with the five vehicles in the Mangudadatu convoy and the corpses if they had more time. There would have been no visible evidence of what happened to them. They would have just disappeared, swallowed by the earth—literally.
So far, 57 corpses have been recovered. The number may still increase. A number of people are still missing.
The brutality of the massacre has shocked not only the Philippines but the whole world. The Philippines is now rated as the most dangerous place for journalists, behind even war-torn Iraq.
The killings were so cold-blooded and brutal that even Filipinos inured to political
killings during election seasons were shocked and outraged. Even the political allies of the Ampatuans, Arroyo and her subordinates, tried to distance themselves from the family. Lakas-Kampi, of which the Ampatuans are members, lost no time in expelling the family from the party at the prodding of its standard-bearer, former Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro. Gibo realizes that if an endorsement by Arroyo is a “kiss of death” to his candidacy, this atrocity by party members would be the last nail on the coffin of his presidential ambition.
Arroyo declared a national day of mourning for the victims and Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita pathetically declared that “we are only human” as his excuse for failing to stop the massacre. Ermita announced that black ribbons would be put up in the Malacañang grounds.
Words, words, words. A day of mourning and black ribbons won’t bring the victims back to life. They won’t put the people who murdered them in prison. They won’t assuage an outraged public. The President will have to do better than mouth empty words written by her ghostwriters. She will have to bring the murderers to justice and put the real ghosts of the victims to rest.
It has been five days since Monday’s massacre, yet nobody has been arrested, no charges filed, nor the principal suspects questioned.
“We are still investigating,” is the government’s lame excuse. “There are no witnesses, no evidence.”
But there is strong circumstantial evidence pointing to the Ampatuans. And as Chair Leila de Lima of the Commission on Human Rights said, circumstantial evidence is enough to prosecute.
What are these circumstantial evidence? There is a backhoe of the provincial government with the name of Governor Ampatuan painted on its side that was left at the site. It was obviously used to dig the mass graves. The killings were premeditated. The wife of Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu called her husband and told him that she was slapped by one of the gunmen whom she identified as “Ampatuan’s men.” She was among those killed. Esmael had been threatened that he would be “chopped to pieces” if he tried to file his certificate of candidacy for governor. He stayed away but sent at least 57 others to their doom.
See:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091127-238633/Day-of-mourning-wont-bring-victims-back-to-life
Editorial
Dynasty tragedy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:33:00 11/27/2009
The shock we all feel over the unprecedented, indeed unimaginable scale of the massacre in Ampatuan, Maguindanao is also, and traumatically, the shock of recognition. We realize: This is what happens when power becomes absolute.
How did one political family come to exercise absolute control over one province? In the same way that other political families who won absolute control in other provinces or districts or cities came to power and maintained their hold on it.
In a polity with weak political parties, a political dynasty is often the best, the most effective form of political organization. When the biggest political parties in the country remain essentially factions bankrolled by financiers or political entrepreneurs—the Nationalist People’s Coalition by businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., the resurrected Nacionalista Party by Sen. Manuel Villar, the Liberal Party by the Araneta-Roxas clan (at least until the sudden ascendancy of Sen. Benigno Aquino III), the Lakas-Kampi-CMD by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—an extended political family, often funded by a ruling elder, offers an additional advantage: built-in loyalty.
A political dynasty requires no membership initiation, no formation programs; membership is, quite literally, a matter of DNA.
In a political domain with a tradition of centralized authority, a dynasty in power enjoys an incomparable advantage: the equity of the incumbent. As any politician knows, power begets power; centralized power, as in the case of an underdeveloped province like Maguindanao, is the gift that keeps on giving.
In a centralized or “traditional” political domain, a ruling political dynasty enjoys another advantage: It can effectively work around the inconvenience of term limits. (Thus, in Maguindanao, the Ampatuan patriarch, Andal Sr., may opt to transfer the office of governor to a son through the benefit of an assured electoral majority.)
In other words, the immaturity of our political system allows political dynasties to flourish.
But the question also demands a specific answer. How did one political family come to exercise absolute control over one province?
By giving the Arroyo administration, the central source of government patronage and power, exactly what it needs, and earning for itself special or legal authority to do, in its own domain, whatever it pleases.
The Ampatuans have ruled Maguindanao since 2001. They have delivered a command vote in two crucial elections: the 2004 presidential contest, and the 2007 senatorial race. Consider that the Maguindanao “vote” proved critical to President Arroyo’s presidential bid and instrumental to Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri’s election to the Senate. Consider, too, that the election of Zaldy Ampatuan as governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2005 was a happy solution for the administration; it placed a reliable ally in the influential ARMM, and allowed the administration a stronger hand in Muslim affairs. (The ARMM governor is son and heir apparent of Andal Sr.)
In return, what did the Ampatuans receive? Among many other favors, a crucial piece of paper, as the PCIJ has written: In 2006, Executive Order 546 allowed the use of barangay tanods (village watchmen) as “force multipliers” in peace and order and counter-insurgency operations. The order gave legal sanction to civilian volunteer organizations or CVOs—and effectively legalized private armies.
This EO led directly, three years later, to the Ampatuan massacre: the worst outbreak of political violence in our history, and the worst loss of life in the history of journalism. On Thuesday, the Philippine National Police ordered the disarming of CVOs, a necessary process not without risk. It has also cancelled all permits to carry firearms (a tacit recognition that licensed guns may very well have been used in the massacre). But the damage has been done.
While the extreme savagery and sheer scale of the mass murder are unprecedented, the basic impulse behind it is something we are all too familiar with: When unmarked, black-tinted SUVs wang-wang their insolent way through a city’s roads, when government officials who have no other source of income except access to public funds ostentatiously purchase the most expensive luxury items, when public servants swagger into a room with dozens of bodyguards, we recognize the seeds of future massacres.
see:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20091127-238632/Dynasty-tragedy
