ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan and Andal Ampatuan Jr. - photo used in the DOJ investigation PHOTO BY RAISSA ROBLES
Acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra exonerated Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan of the Ampatuan, Maguinandao massacre because he said Governor Zaldy was not there at the scene of the crime.
Governor Zaldy had a plane ticket and cellphone records to prove this, he said.
Please read below portions of Kenny Dalandag’s affidavit that formed part of the basis for the arrest of Gov. Zaldy. I did not get this from the lawyers of the slain journalists’ families. In fact lawyer Harry Roque declined to give it to me. I got it from deep within the government bureaucracy.
This morning, Justice Secretary Agra defended his move on radio saying:
Para imaintain yung impartiality ng pagreview ng mga dokumento at records, hindi ho naman kinokonsulta yung nagpahayag ng mga dokumento.
Kayat bagamat nagkaroon ako ng ilang discussion tungkol dito sa update tungkol sa Maguindanao massacre, ang naging basehan ko lang po ng aking resolution ay yung mga dokumento at mga ebidensiya na nasa Department t of Justice. Wala na pong iba.
This is the rough translation of what Agra said:
In order to maintain the the impartiality of the review of the documents and records, one does not consult those who gave the documents.
And so, while I had some discussion about the update on the Maguindanao massacre, the basis of my resolution were the documents and the evidence at the Department of Justice. Nothing else.
From his statements, it was clear he did not make an effort to talk to Kenny Dalandag. But last weekend Agence France Presse quoted Agra as saying:
“There was no proof of conspiracy and there was proof of an alibi.”
How did he come to that conclusion without talking to Kenny Dalandag?
Did he even consider Kenny Dalandag’s affidavit (read portions below)? Because if he didn’t he may be laying the predicate to exonerate more Ampatuans.
Following today’s bombings in Basilan, I would like to share this piece I wrote on:
What an alleged c0-founder of the Abu Sayyaf told me about the terrorist group;
Why a failed peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front would not result in an outbreak of conflict (unless provoked by the Philippine military);
Why a peace pact is so difficult to achieve; and
What the next Philippine president faces in Mindanao.
In Metro Manila, Muslims applying for corporate jobs hide their
religious affiliation for fear this would lead to instant rejection.
In Mindanao, lovely beaches lie deserted and vast areas, rich in oil,
gas and minerals, remain untapped because bandits and kidnappers roam around at all hours of the day.
Overseas, potential investors hesitate to put their money down in a business venture in Manila, following fresh news of another bombing or beheading in the remote southern island of Basilan.
All these are part and parcel of the Mindanao conflict that has bedeviled the young Philippine Republic for nearly half a century.
The festering problem has helped breed a Muslim nationalist movement, which has partly metastasized into a deadly form of extremism that now makes even far-away Manila unsafe from bombings.
Now President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is rushing a peace deal with the
10,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to address the
conflict.
Both sides hope for the best.
“I still would like to come to an agreement” before June 30 this year, President Arroyo recently told the foreign press during a dinner she
hosted. “It’s still within reach. We have formal peace talks now. We have a ceasefire,” she said.
Even the MILF is hoping for a miracle at the eleventh hour. Chief rebel negotiator Mohagher Iqbal told me:
A peace agreement is still possible. In Northern Ireland, it was signed two months before Prime Minister Tony Blair exited from office in 2008.
Why peace is difficult
But the dynamics of Philippine politics are radically different from that of the United Kingdom. And both sides agree the problem awaits solutions uniquely homegrown.
Over four million Muslims reside in the Autonomous Region for Muslim
Mindanao (ARMM) but untold millions now live in various parts of the
country, scattered by the 1970s war waged by the dictator Ferdinand
Marcos.
The Muslims’ desire for a Bangsamoro homeland intensified when
they rose up in arms against Marcos.
It also forced Muslims to abandon their land, which Christian settlers
then grabbed. Even North Cotabato vice governor Emmanuel Pinol concedes this injustice happened on a large scale in central Mindanao and must be rectified. But he successfully opposed the solution proposed by the Arroyo government in the form of a landmark deal which would have granted Muslims a Bangsamoro homeland.
The Supreme Court scrapped it two years ago on grounds of unconstitutionality. This prompted a violent response from some MILF
commanders who remain at large to this day despite military action.
Why the peace process failed
Why did the peace process – running for 12 years now – fail so suddenly and tragically?
During a recent round table on the issue co-sponsored by the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, Cesar Pobre, a retired colonel and consultant at the Armed Forces office of strategic and special studies, said the fatal flaw was in keeping most Filipinos completely in the dark and totally disengaged from the peace process.
Lawyer Nasser Marohomsalic, a convenor of the Philippine Council for
Islam and Democracy, also pointed to the lack of a peace constituency
in the country and the high level of distrust by the Christian majority for the Muslim minority who comprise from 4% to 10% of the population.
In a 2005 nationwide study by private pollster Social Weather Stations, only 63% of Filipinos had a favorable perception of Islam – but still a marked improvement from the 43% in 2002 following a rash of high-profile kidnappings and beheading by the Muslim terrorist Abu Sayyaf.
Most Filipinos today have no memory of the Mindanao wars that continue to ignite Muslim passions because the Marcos-controlled media made sure not to report on these. The New York Times reported on February 18, 1977 that the wars had resulted in “10,000 dead and a half a million made homeless.”
The wars touched every Filipino Muslim family with pain and death but
a new generation of non-Muslim Filipinos has since grown up wondering
what the fuss is all about. Because of this, Filipinos in general lack sympathy for the struggle of the Muslims, who in turn deeply resent this.
The peace process is also saddled by additional unwanted baggage, namely Arroyo’s high level of public distrust. According to lawyer-peace advocate Soliman Santos Jr., part of the solution lies in amending the Constitutional provision on Muslim autonomy. But most Filipinos refuse to go that route out of fear that Arroyo would use the occasion to change other sections of the Constitution to perpetuate herself in power.
In a recently published paper, Santos also scored the government’s fragmented and dissonant approach to the Mindanao conflict. Practically the same territory, political and economic powers that the government has been trying to offer the MILF was already handed to the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in its 1996 peace deal, he pointed out. The MNLF is the mother unit from which the MILF broke away in the 1970s.
MNLF chairman Nur Misuari is to date still trying to pressure the government for a full implementation of that deal.
Misuari’s deal helped lead to the flowering of the Abu Sayyaf, which
resented the secular nature of his brand of autonomy and insisted on a
separate state run along Islamic precepts.
Camilo Montesa, an assistant secretary to the government’s presidential peace adviser, has suggested an integrated approach to the MNLF, MILF and the Abu Sayyaf. He said:
We cannot continue to deal with the MILF peace process, the MNLF peace process, the challenge to make ARMM work, and the threats posed by extremist groups like the JI (Jemaah Islamiyah) and Abu Sayyaf as if they are separate and unrelated.
While we engage these groups differently, we want to engage them in view of all our other efforts across the other tables [because]in the end, we are talking about the same people, the same aspirations, the same problems and probably the same solutions.
A word of advice from a suspected Abu Sayyaf terrorist
His advice makes sense. In a recent face-to-face interview with Abdul Basir
Latip, suspected co-founder of the Abu Sayyaf whom the United States is trying to repatriate in order to stand trial, this is what he told me when I asked him – how do you resolve a problem like the 400-strong Abu Sayyaf?
Latip denied to me that he co-founded the Abu Sayyaf. However, because he personally knows and mingles with its leaders and members, he shared the following insight:
This Abu Sayyaf, as I look at their purpose, they are somewhat
disgruntled, discouraged by the acts of the MNLF and the MILF, because they look at these organizations as their inspiration. They were assured that the teaching of Islam will be implemented in Mindanao.
But what happened, when MNLF accepted negotiations to establish an autonomous government and similarly the MILF, these members of the Abu Sayyaf got discouraged because they have changed the real motive of putting up an Islamic government in Mindanao.
Thus, he said, the Abu Sayyaf’s
real purpose is to establish a separate form of government distinct and different form the government of the Philippines…a separation.
He said the Abu Sayyaf’s religious ideology of Islamic revivalism is
shared by a small segment in the MILF.
MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim, though, does not adhere to it. Following the teachings of its late founder Hashim Salamat, the MILF seeks to govern along Islamic precepts, stricter than what is currently practiced in the south but far less radical than what the Abu Sayyaf wants.
Ironically, while the peace process is bound to fail in the immediate
future, things are looking much better for the MILF.
Its rival for political power, the MNLF, is now a shadow of its former
proud self.
The MILF is now recognized as a legitimate revolutionary organization
by the United Nations, the United States, Japan, the UK, Canada, Australia and other western countries, as well as by the Organization of the Islamic Conference comprised of the world’s Muslim states.
It is for this reason that a failure to pass a peace deal will not result in war, as it had in the past. Iqbal told me:
We do not want the international community to brand the MILF as an anti-peace organization.
But the flip side is that the next Philippine president has to deal
with an organization better prepared to bargain hard for the rights of
its people.
Nearly eight years ago I asked President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, “I’m sure a lot of women are dying to ask you this question.”
“And since you are not a widow, they would like to ask you this question. You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but a lot of women are dying to know – do you still have sex?”
The 55-year-old mother of three replied “Plenty” – and gave a toothy smile.
Last January 22, when she hosted a a surprise dinner for 23 officers and members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) I asked her a milder personal question about her hair. Now I’m not so sure if her reluctant reply pertained to my question eight years ago or two Fridays ago.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and FOCAP
During the hour-long dinner, Mrs Arroyo was at her gracious best but she was not all that candid. I must say, it took all of our reportorial skills to get her to talk about her former college student and now leading presidential contender Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. She refused to talk about her party’s presidential standard bearer Gilbert Teodoro or about her feelings towards the Ampatuans – her long-time allies now accused of murdering 57 people including 30 journalists.
The ease with which she talked to reporters vanished in 2005 when wiretapped tapes of her, suggesting she was trying to rig her 2004 poll victory by a million votes, leaked out.
During her dinner some of that ease returned as she talked about the presidential palace, her girlhood and her Palace chef. Only to vanish when she refused to answer many questions she deemed “political” or which asked about her “feelings”.
Still, the occasion gave me a momentary glimpse of the power and the pomp of the presidency, its lonely isolation, and the woman who was determined to hold on to it for as long as she could.
I did not get any hint she was ready to clear out her desk by June 30 when her term ends.
At short notice. An invitation to dine with her, even at several hours’ notice, was highly unusual and one I seized at a moment’s notice. She had not seen FOCAP since 2007. A press conference in 2008 was abruptly canceled after we were told she would only talk about the economy and would not entertain political questions.
I was curious why the President wanted to meet us on the same day she waved goodbye to the remains of her press secretary, Cerge Remonde.
Her terms for engaging the foreign press quickly became evident. At the entrance to the presidential palace, the guards impounded all tape recorders and cameras on orders of the palace media relations office. It was a first for many of the journalists, including me, who have covered Palace events in three previous presidencies.
The media handlers later explained that no tape recorders and cameras were allowed because it was a strictly social event. A Palace photographer would snap photos. The confiscation disoriented me somewhat because we were informed earlier that while there was no formal Q and A, the President “may answer questions”.
Didn’t she want to be quoted correctly? And it would have been bad manners for us to scribble throughout the meal.
It turned out alright in the end, because someone else, who asked to remain unnamed, enabled me to put together almost the entire dinner conversation. Besides, Mrs Arroyo never told us it was off the record.
Before Martial Law was imposed in Maguindanao, the Ampatuans were known worldwide as the prime suspects in the deliberate liquidation of 57 people, 30 of them journalists. This has set a world record for the worst one-day killing of media men in peace time, while covering a democratic exercise.
To understand how stupefied many of us at the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) were at the sudden declaration of Martial Law to catch the Ampatuans, let me give this background.
For many FOCAP members, Filipino rebels are just a phone call away. It is at times easier for us to reach by mobile phone a communist or Muslim rebel leader than a high government official.
And for those covering rebels since 1987, the Ampatuans have never been in our radar. In fact, top officials of the Moro National Liberation Front used to tell me that they felt very aggrieved that the Muslim autonomy they had won with the blood of their warriors was handed on a silver platter by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to a member of the Ampatuan clan which had continuously opposed them during the Marcos dictatorship.
If the Ampatuans are indeed rebels, they seemed to be a different species altogether.By being suspected of killing journalists en masse just before launching their rebellion, they have ensured that the media will boycott and even be hostile towards them. What strange rebels indeed.
Our years of covering and writing about the Muslim and communist insurgencies have taught us that rebels don’t as a rule liquidate journalists because it is not in their creed and not to their advantage. Even the Abu Sayyaf, branded terrorist by the United States and the European Union, has merely held hostage and robbed members of FOCAP and other media men who came to cover them. It has yet to behead a reporter deliberately, knock on wood.
Many FOCAP members who regularly take the red-eye flight to central Mindanao to cover the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) know the reputation of the Ampatuans. They are the king of the hill, the warlords, the overlords, the one whose 15-car speeding convoy you avoid on the highway if you don’t want your car to end up like a pretzel.
Foreign and local journalists take their life in their hands whenever they cover in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Do you know that Manila’s insurance firms have attached a permanent rider to life and accident insurance products that says – death due to non-natural causes is not covered if this occurs in the ARMM area?
It is perhaps in this context that one can better appreciate the emotional outburst during the December 7, 2009 briefing of veteran FOCAP member Tress Martelino-Reyes, correspondent for the Japanese news agency Nikkei. Tress is not a parachute journalist. She once reported for the broadsheet Manila Chronicle.
To understand why she mentioned the phrase “sitting on their ass,” listen to this exchange between her and Secretary Puno:
Some people have taken strong exception to the fact that FOCAP has issued a very strong political statement against the imposition of Martial Law in Maguindanao. Members of FOCAP are not elected by the people, one critic said.
True. But the press is a strange sort of animal in the Philippines, specifically protected by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which states: “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press…”
I believe the press is protected only because it is an external mechanism intended to check state abuse. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been trying mightily to revise this particular constitutional provision in order to defang the press and make it into the lapdog that it was during Marcos’ Martial Law.
The Ampatuan massacre has been condemned worldwide. Even in Manila, we feel its chilling effect. As political analyst Manolo Quezon indicated, it has ripped away a talisman that the press thought it had – a thin piece of paper wedged between two pieces of laminated plastic called “the press card”.
If those who killed 30 journalists in one day can get away with it, this signals to others how easy it would be to kill one or two or three.
We were all understandably very eager to know as much as we could how the Ampatuans suddenly became rebels. By the way, this should really qualify the Philippines in the Guinness Book of World Records as the country with the most number of simultaneous rebellions.
We were glad the presidential palace took the trouble to brief us. FOCAP Executive Director Gabby Tabuñar, former Manila correspondent for CBS News, ably steered the question and answer portion. Present in the briefing were the following:
Presidential spokesman and Press Secretary Cerge Remonde
Interior and Local overnments Secretary Ronaldo Puno
Acting Justice Secretary Agnes Devandera
Armed Forces deputy chief of staff for operations Major General Gaudencio S. Pangilinan
Philippine National Police Director General Jesus Versoza
Philippine National Police spokesman Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina
Philippine National Police Director for Operations Andres Caro II
To listen to Puno answer questions about this posed by Focap member Charmaine Deogracias of NHK, please click on this.
Police Director General Jesus Versoza (second on the right in the video) and Police spokesman Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina also dazzled us with an enumeration of the wide array of high-powered weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition they had seized from the Ampatuans’ huge warehouses and palatial homes.
When the government imposed a state of emergency followed by Martial Law in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao, the reason it gave was that it feared an outbreak of violence between the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans.
Authorities had described both clans as “well-armed”. Seeing how well-armed the Ampatuans were, Karl Wilson of Agence France Presse naturally wanted to know if the Mangudadatus had been disarmed as well by the government.
Judge by Puno’s answer whether this has happened.
FOCAP member Dana Batnag of Jiji Press also wanted to know whether the acts of the Ampatuans met the legal definition of rebellion. Dana is a part-time law student at the University of the Philippines College of Law and was once a reporter for The Manila Chronicle.
The Revised Penal Code defines rebellion as “rising publicly and taking arms against the Government for the purpose of removing allegiance from said Government the territory of the Repulic of the Philipines or any part thereof…or depriving the Chief Executive or the Legislature, wholly or partially, of any of their powers or prerogatives.”
Based on our personal experience as reporters, rebellion is being committed by Muslim separatists trying to secede; by communist rebels trying to violently overthrow government; and by soldier rebels trying to unseat the Philippine president.
So what did the Ampatuans try to do to merit such a label, Dana wanted to know. Click on video below to listen to the government’s explanation.
I followed up Dana’s query by asking whether it was possible no rebellion took place because the tax-paid militia men were only ever loyal to the Ampatuans and never to the Philippine Republic. Armed Forces deputy chief of staff for operations Major General Gaudencio S. Pangilinan, seated off camera beside Gabby, gave the answer:
I also asked if authorities had all the while been looking “the other way” while the Ampatuans amassed all those arms and ammo:
FOCAP members were also intrigued to find out who was the leader of the firefights between government forces and Ampatuan loyalists.
Jim Gomez of Associated Press asked the security officials to elaborate on the charges filed against the Ampatuans.
Jim also wanted to know what method the authorities were using to round up the rest of the suspects.
After the briefing, I tried to ransack my mind, trying to compare the Ampatuan rebels with all the other rebels I had encountered. They did not fit any of the current moulds.
Rebels usually secrete documents laying out their ideology and plans. I remember that when the Magdalo group first burst into the picture, the president’s national security adviser Victor Corpuz briefed FOCAP extensively on the Magdalo’s ideology, using computer diskettes they found.
All that ransacking the government did inside the various Ampatuan mansions failed to turn up a single piece of paper outlining the Ampatuan rebel ideology. I sure would like to hear the Ampatuan ideology, or does this consist only of using a chainsaw and a backhoe?
If the Ampatuans had turned rebels on November 26, why did Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan hold a press conference three days later to appeal to media and the presidential palace to treat him fairly? That would have been the perfect time to launch their rebellion.
Personally, I believe the Arroyo government imposed Martial Law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus so it could arrest the Ampatuans and brand them rebels.
Justice secretary Agnes Devanadera herself stated as much before FOCAP when asked by Manny Mogato of Reuters for an update on the massacre:
Without Martial Law, the Ampatuans are just suspected monsters and mass murderers.
Manny also asked if the government might investigate the Ampatuans if they diverted any funds coming from the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and Japan’s JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) to buying their illegal armory. Here’s Puno’s reply -
Days later, Malacañang Palace backtracked on the matter. See GMAnews story.
What really bothers me is what Arroyo’s deputy spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo said:
“If we will see later on that the Ampatuans are found guilty based on the investigation, then whether ally or not they will not be given special treatment and they should be punished… but it doesn’t mean that we are no longer friends with them if they are guilty. I think that should be treated separately” (My underscoring.)
It’s okay for the president to continue being friends with the Ampatuans even if they prove to be monsters?
Citing the wrong law as the legal basis shows that this martial law is so sloppily put together. I fear the suspected murderers can get away with murder by exploiting precisely this sloppiness.
In this instance, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Proclamation 1959 using the following as her basis for declaring Martial Law:
the Constitution and
Republic Act 6986.
But RA 6986 happens to be “An Act establishing a high school in Barangay Dulop, municipality of Dumingag, province of Zamboanga del Sur, to be known as the Dulop High School, and appropriating funds therefore.” See for yourself. Go to chanrobles.com and scroll down to view RA6986
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita shows a copy of Proclamation No. 1959 signed on December 4, 2009 by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, proclaiming a state of martial law and suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in the province of Maguindanao, except for certain areas after a press briefing Saturday (December 5) in Malacanang. (Official photo release by the Office of the Press Secretary, photo by Marcelino Pascua)
Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera must have caught on to this mistake because in the press conference today at noon in Malacanang Palace, she started by pointing out a “clerical error” in Proclamation 1959. She didn’t apologize or explain the mistake, though. To watch the presscon, go to Dec 5, 2009
She said: “Let me first announce a correction in our Proclamation No. 1959. There is a clerical error on the third ‘Whereas’ clause –instead of RA No. 6989, it should be Act no. 3815 as amended which is the Revised Penal Code.”
What happens now to Zaldy and Andal Ampatuan Sr who were arrested on the basis of this proclamation? Could their wily lawyer Sigfrid Fortun exploit this mistake to point out that their arrests were baseless?
Let’s assume good faith. Perhaps the drafters of the proclamation were sleepy and made a mistake and inverted the numbers?
Sure enough, they did. R.A. 6968 is – “An Act punishing the crime of coup d’etat by amending Articles 134, 135 and 136 of…The Revised Penal Code, and for other purposes.”
This is the same provision in the Revised Penal Code that Devanadera said the Proclamation referred to.
It states how rebellion or insurrection is committed:
“The crime of rebellion or insurrection is committed by rising and taking arms against the Government for the purpose of removing from the allegiance to said Government or its laws, the territory of the Republic of the Philippines or any part thereof, of any body of land, naval or other armed forces, or depriving the Chief Executive or the Legislature, wholly or partially, of any of their powers or prerogatives.”
Let’s break down this long sentence,
“The crime of rebellion or insurrection is committed by rising and taking arms against the Government…
I’m puzzled by this. It’s now sunset and no armed men – that the military said were massing - have been were arrested in connection with the rebellion.
During the press con, Devanadera justified martial law by saying: “It was a looming and in fact it was already practically an overthrow of government. The courts were not functioning in Maguindanao.”
But she had started her explanation by saying: “There were arrests and there were witnesses that came up and the appropriate charges were filed for multiple murder. ” Didn’t that show a functioning court?
To further justify martial law, she said, “practically the local governments in the whole of Mindanao had been removed from the legitimate government authorities. In fact most of these local government units, even the municipal buildings especially, have closed down. They cease to render government services and there was massing in various parts of heavily armed men.”
Perhaps there is another reason why town halls shut down? Last week, President Arroyo gave Interior and Local Governments Secretary Ronaldo Puno wide supervisory powers over the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) which includes Maguindanao. Presidential spokesman Cerge Remonde said Puno had the power to suspend all officials of Maguindanao province and relieve all police and military commanders in the area.
Did he or did he not suspend local executives? And didn’t he also have the power to replace them for dereliction of duty?
Today Remonde practically said media should be grateful for martial law. He said “this step is taken by Her Excellency President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in answer to that cry for justice of the victims of the Maguindanao massacre.”
Unfortunately, the Ampatuans will not be tried by a military court but by a civilian court that could throw out vital evidence just because this was taken in an unconstitutional manner.
I fear this martial law is a set-up. An overkill that will harm the case of the Filipino people against the Ampatuans.
I believe the true test of a democratic nation is the ability of its people to sack their leaders ritually through fraud-free elections. And to criticize and hold them accountable without fear of being buried by a backhoe.
April 19, 2010 | Posted by raissa robles 
Categories: Ampatuan massacre, Journalism, Mindanao | 
Tags: Acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra, Ampatuan massacre | 
19 Comments »
