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.