Mrs President, do give the butchers of Maguindao the “Ted Failon” treatment

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by Raisa Robles

It’s close to midnight of Day 3 since at least 57 unarmed women and men were murdered in broad daylight and still not one of around 100 suspects have been nabbed and presented to the outraged public. This is despite your declaration of a state of emergency in that area under Proclamation 1946. (By the way, your office has not released the text of this Proclamation. Wonder why.)

As of 6pm, 57 corpses were recovered but the police were looking for 79 bodies in all.

Photo taken by Rolivel Elusfa and posted with his permission. He said this is the 52nd body dug up from the 2nd mass grave. As of 6pm, 57 corpses were recovered but the police were looking for 79 bodies in all.

How do you sleep at night, Mrs President, knowing you could have prevented this?

You must know who the Butchers of Maguindanao are and how this might affect the outcome of the 2010 presidential elections next year.

If the Ampatuans are guilty, you know that they know a lot of your dirty secrets. The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), where Zaldy Ampatuan is the governor, has 1.5 million registered voters. You won by one million votes in 2004.

It fills me with horror that if even one of them perpetrated the crime, you were meeting with ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan on November 23 - the very day the massacre was taking place.

Did Governor Zaldy know something bad was scheduled to happen? It’s like a scene straight out of The Godfather mafia movie.

Governor Zaldy was there trying to get you to endorse Lakas Party Congressman Munir Arbison to run as governor of Sulu, your political strategist Gabriel Claudio said afterward. Sulu’s incumbent governor is Sakur Tan, who is in your Kampi Party. That is another dangerous political brew in the making. It would be just like Maguindanao where your two party mates – the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus – are fighting it out not only for the governorship but for various local posts.

The massacre would not have happened if your Lakas Party had resolved the Maguindanao gubernatorial issue internally.

I was thinking, if you’re really after swift impartial justice, why don’t you do it Manila style? Treat the suspects the way the police treated broadcaster Ted Failon after he found his wife shot in the head on April 15 this year.

Only hours after the incident, the police arrested Failon even without a single witness pointing an accusing finger at him. Even without a criminal complaint being filed against him. The police subjected him at once to a paraffin test because they said it was imperative that they find out whether he had fired a gun.

Four policemen were relieved afterward but only for the “forceful arrest” of his two relatives, not for arresting Failon.

When the test on his hands and clothes turned out negative for powder burns, the police insisted he was still their prime suspect because paraffin tests are not that reliable after all.

In the present case of mass murder, the prime suspect was at once tagged by the husband of one of the victims. The police and military knew beforehand there was a security threat against the husband because he had asked for armed government security to escort his wife. The authorities turned him down.

During that fateful day, the victim had phoned her husband Ishmael Mangudadatu just before dying, to tell him that about a hundred men had blocked her group. She even named the ringleader – Andal Ampatuan, Jnr. Hours later, she turned up dead.

It was this phone call that alarmed her husband into alerting authorities to look for her.

Instead of picking up the prime suspect for questioning and your usual paraffin test, you sent a top presidential aide, Jesus Dureza, to talk to the suspect’s father and to ask for the family’s cooperation in the investigation.

They were not the only victims. Many of the dead were reporters. Have you sent anyone to offer your condolences to their families? Or are they outside your concern?

The only demand to date from the presidential palace is for the murderers to please turn themselves in. It has sent no posse to pick them up the way Ted Failon and his relatives were immediately picked up for questioning.

No one in the Ampatuan family has publicly said a word since the Monday massacre and it’s now Wednesday midnight.

Wow.

From now on, will you be treating all suspects that way? Or just these suspects.

You know, even if I did write about this for my newspaper I never really grasped the full scale of the horror until I saw the photos of the victims sprawled on the grass like discarded trash. Many of them were killed because like me, they were just reporters.

The husband, Mangudadatu, recounted on RMN-DZXL radio that his dead wife was tortured while still alive:

Ang masakit po – nakita ko kagabi noong inutiospy ang aking asawa, nilaslas po ari, binaril ari , binaril sa bunganga. Yung kanyang kanang mata pinalabas. Yan po ay sobrang hindi po makatao. Lahat ng pinsalang doon, pinagbabaril ang ari para sa ganon hindi po magkaroon ng positibong resulta pagka ito’y nagkaroon ng masusing pagsusuri sa kanilang mga ari. Yun ang paniwala ng mga nangahasa.

Here is the rough translation:

The painful thing is, I saw my wife last night when she was being autopsied. Her genitals had been slashed, and shot. She was shot through the mouth. Her right eye was gouged out. That is so inhuman. All that mutilation, her private parts were shot at so that there would be no positive results upon examination. That was what her rapist thought.

In some photographs, some of the bodies have the the flies of their pants open. And some are naked. Those are the women. Some also look pregnant. Mangudadatu confirmed his slain sister and two aunts were pregnant.

In a normal world the President of the Republic of the Philippines would be foaming at the mouth and spluttering in rage at this blatant butchery. It took you – let me see – two days to express personal outrage.

Today you called for a day of mourning. NO, Mrs. President, it should be DAYS OF OUTRAGE.

Your presidential standard bearer Gilberto Teodoro earlier issued statements making it appear he has nothing to do with the deadly quarrel between the two Maguindanao clans. But now he has everything to do with it because last week you made him chairman of Lakas-Kampi Party.

Or is he just a puppet with you pulling the strings?

At this very moment while I’m writing this entry I hear on the evening newscast that Teodoro and his running mate Edu Manzano visited today the grieving spouse, Mangudadatu. Teodoro urged the Lakas executive committee to expel ARMM Governor Zaldy and his father, three-term Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan, “for their failure to supervise as heads of the Ampatuan clan the principles of our party for peaceful, honest electoral processes and peaceful honest political dialogue”

Mmmm. Is that their only crime?

I’m also hearing about fresh threats being issued against the Mindanao-based media covering the crime scene, because some people are hurting over the “sensationalized” reporting. Believe me, we don’t even have to try. The facts are horrific enough.

Is that why the reporters were killed? Because their words hurt?

allthatblah:

Shameful!

Source: failurebydsgn

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