State of emergency

By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer
November 25, 2009

THE MAY 2010 national election was marred by the bloodiest massacre on Monday forcing President Macapagal-Arroyo to declare a state of emergency in two provinces and one city. This was the first time an emergency was declared in relation to an election, although past Philippine elections have often been marked by violence between private armies of provincial political warlords.

The carnage in Maguindanao set the gruesome tone of election-related violence. The massacre took place outside the matrix of the fighting stemming from the clashes in Mindanao between government forces and Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels fighting for the establishment of a separate Bangsamoro homeland in Mindanao.

The casualties were both Muslims and Christians, and no group associated with the MILF or the Moro National Liberation Front has been linked to the massacre. The President declared the emergency after Presidential Adviser for Mindanao Jesus Dureza recommended the extraordinary measure to facilitate the disbandment of armed groups and prevent the escalation of violence. The President condemned the attack and said no effort would be spared to find those responsible. “Civilized society has no place for this kind of violence,” she said.

The human rights organization, Amnesty International, reported the killings of at least 21 civilians, including journalists, relatives and supporters of a family of local politicians, and said the slaughter was the first to be linked to the May 2010 election. According to first reports, a group of about 45 people were ambushed and abducted by about 100 armed men. The military reported that it had recovered the bodies of 13 women and eight men, some of them mutilated.

Reports said Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu, led by his wife Genalyn, was waylaid at 10:30 a.m. by armed men, while they were on their way to file the vice mayor’s certificate of candidacy for provincial governor at the provincial office of the Commission on Elections on Shariff Aguak. The Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy said the brutal violence brought the state of lawlessness in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) “to a new low.”

Previous elections in the ARMM were marred by violence and widespread cheating. The deputy director for Asia Pacific of Amnesty International said, “These killings underline the danger facing civilians in the run up to the national elections.”

According to Vice Mayor Mangudadatu, among those killed where his wife, his two sisters—Eden, vice mayor of Mangudadato town, and Farina—and his legal counsels Cynthia Oquendo and Connie Brizuela. Mangudadatu is running for governor, a post held by Gov. Andal Ampatuan, whose son, the mayor of Unsay town, is reported to be seeking to fill. The Mangudadatus are reported to be engaged in a long-running feud with the Ampatuan clan, which counts among its members Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan of the ARMM.

The slaughter reaped the biggest haul of deaths among journalists, who were covering the filing of Mangudadatu’s certificate of candidacy, in one stroke of violence. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said, “Covering the news has always been dangerous in the Philippines, but the wanton killing of so many people makes this an assault on the very fabric of the country’s democracy.”

This condemnation echoed the statement of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines which said: “This [massacre] not only erases all doubts about the Philippines being the most dangerous country for journalists in the world, outside of Iraq, it could very well place the country on the map as a candidate for a failed democracy.”

More than 38 Filipino journalists have been killed for their work since 1992, and 27 others have been killed for reasons other than their work. NUJP pointed out that very few cases have been brought to trial, giving the Philippines one of the worst records of impunity in cases involving the killing of journalists in the world, as well in cases involving the extra-judicial executions of leftist activists by anonymous death squads.

Whether or not the crackdown ordered by President Arroyo on the private armies of Mindanao warlords will lead to their disbandment and stop violence from escalating into vendettas is very much in doubt. The army is fully engaged in fighting the Islamic separatist rebels, and can ill afford to divert its effort and forces to disarming the armies of warlords.

President Arroyo is widely perceived to have benefited from the ARMM’s “reservoir of votes” during the 2004 presidential election, in which her intervention in the tally is widely believed to have led to the rigging of the election, allowing her to win.

The Maguindanao slaughter has heightened fears that the declaration of emergency in area could lay the ground for a possible declaration of a failure of election in some parts of the country, giving the President an excuse to suspend the results from such places and opening the way for the rigging of results later. The emergency declaration, no matter how limited in scope, is being made at a critical moment of an election in which the President is widely suspected of grabbing opportunities to suspending it.