BUENAVISTA, Agusan del Norte (MindaNews/23 November) – It’s not just coincidence that the nation marked the second anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre at the same time that it’s facing yet another major issue: the arrest of former president and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on charges of election fraud in relation to the conduct of the 2007 senatorial polls. She will certainly have to confront many more cases in the days ahead, things that will frustrate any and all attempts to spirit her out of the country to evade prosecution and possible conviction.
The principal accused in the Ampatuan Massacre happen to be the same politicians who orchestrated the incredible although passed off as realistic 12-0 sweep of Arroyo’s senatorial candidates in Maguindanao province, in 2007. Arroyo’s link with the Ampatuans, if one looks at it closely, was the biggest factor that led those 58 victims to the lonely hills of Sitio Masalay in Ampatuan town to be killed in cold blood. Yes, no lawyer can prove that in any court, the law not being designed to exact culpability based on remotely circumstantial proof, in the same way that negligent parents cannot be held legally liable for the crimes their children may commit.
Nonetheless, this reminds us that the perpetrators of crimes, in particular murders that are abetted by a culture of impunity, are not just the men who pull the trigger; equally guilty are the individuals who encourage the crimes not only by providing the killers with the arsenal but also by ignoring their dastardly acts. The desolate hills of Masalay – and Maguindanao itself – would not have become a killing field if Arroyo and his generals had taken steps against the Ampatuans.
But anyone who understands the implication of the DND and PNP markings on those weapons that were recovered from the Ampatuans knows the futility of wishing what could not have been.
This can’t possibly be argued in court, only in a venue like this column where the mind is not bound by rigid rules of what’s material and relevant.[]/a> with |||
There’s a need to sift the chaff from the grain, so a cliché goes. Safeguarding a person’s health is a legitimate issue. But so is the quest to know what really happened in Maguindanao in 2007.
Lumping these two different issues together will get us nowhere. Let the prosecutors do their job and see how the cases will fare in court.
