Aquino has betrayed us

Antonio Montalvan II @inquirerdotnet

12:11 AM | Monday, February 2nd, 2015

Mamasapano is personal to me. Some years ago, I happened to visit that

place. It was so typical of the vast plains that Cotabato was before it was
gerrymandered into five provinces. That act of gerrymandering was in fact
typical as well of how Manila has shaped this part of Mindanao since the
colonial era.
It may be hard for many to believe that when the colonial government caused
the migration to Mindanao from the north beginning in 1914, many of the
Christian arrivals were welcomed not just with open arms but even with
ceremonial gifts from the Moro people who, in that part, are ethnolinguistically
called the Maguindanaos. The picture of genuine peaceful coexistence may
be hard to imagine today. In fact, intermarriages between settlers and Moro
people were as commonplace then as it is today.
The dynamics of that coexistence began to change when Manila politics saw
the need to extend its political clout to Cotabato in the only way it knew
forming a pool of leaders shaped after Manilas own image of traditional
politicians. True, Manila developed a breed of educated Maguindanao
leaders. But it also created local political lords with what the scholar Patricio
Abinales calls Janus-faced personae. As their political power and wealth
grew, they became calloused to the concerns of the Moro masses.
Pole-vault into later decades, when Moro nationalist movements arose to fill
an unfortunate vacuumthe lack of concrete measures addressing the needs
of grassroots Moro society whose space was, by then, already being shared
with settlers.
With this short discourse on the history of that part of Mindanao, we should be
able to see the Mamasapano encounter in that light and how Manila
characteristically responded to Moro concerns. President Aquinos response is
consistent with the Janus-faced treatment of Mindanaousing deception and
treachery.
When the President went on national broadcast, it became clear he was using
doublespeak. But in the fast world of social media where answers do not take
long to go public, we are no longer a nation of idiots. Mr. Aquino was in fact on

top of the operation and monitored the movements of the Special Action Force
in real time from Zamboanga. Then the most bizarre element of the story
began to unravelthe entire operation was directed by remote control from a
shadow command at the White House of Camp Crame by the suspended
chief of the Philippine National Police. That explained the deceptionAlan
Purisima was a chum of Mr. Aquino and it was clear Mr. Aquino was protecting
him more than the Fallen 44. In just a matter of hours, the political landscape
of the entire country changed.
The brutal way the Fallen 44 died will certainly continue to agonize our hearts
in the days to come. What changed the political landscape was the realization
that we have a commander in chief who dodges responsibility and dismisses
44 deaths as expendable. Each day we are deceived, we die with them.
To rush the Bangsamoro Basic Law now is to kill the prospects for truth and
justice for the Fallen 44. A people betrayed have lost their dignity because
betrayal is an affront to dignity. That dignity must first be restored in the only
way possibleaccountability. The question to ask is no longer why, but who.
A board of inquiry with ties that bind will be useless. The three generals
named to sit in that board are reportedly classmates of Purisima. A whitewash
may have already begun. Purisima has flown off to Saipan on the day the
bodies arrived at Villamor Air Base.
Only an independent truth commission composed of credible Mindanaonot
Manilapersonalities can unravel the truth and then name names without fear
or favor. It must be put in place soonest. Each day Aquino lies to the nation,
the more he disrespects the Fallen 44.
We have seen video footage of the carnage: littered bodies looted of uniforms,
boots, night vision goggles, Ultimax weapons and even mobile phones; many
mutilated, 16 beyond recognition; a skull pried open, stuffed with leaves;
heads shot at close range, gangland style.
Barbarism in the most despicable way.
The prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) has left us with a Hadithto
honor the dead is to bury themrespect for a dead body is the enforceable
norm. I ask my brother Muslims responsible for that butchery: Will you not
honor the dead body of a non-Muslim in the same way you wish done to a
fellow Muslim? Religious tolerance is a simple reciprocal act. The word
Islamic should be removed from your name.

The truth commission must determine the Moro Islamic Liberation Fronts and
the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters accountability in the carnage. One
writer described the encounter: not a firefight but a turkey shoot, with the MILF
forces encircling the SAF troops, then a massacre when the policemen
surrendered.
The Filipino people waits for answers from the MILF leadership, not by the glib
excuse that it had no knowledge of a certified terrorist in their midst. Three
MILF camps were just in the vicinity: Camp Omar ibn al-Khattab, Camp
Abubakar as-Siddique and Camp Badre. Under the July 1997 Agreement on
General Cessation of Hostilities, the government and the MILF are to help
each other, through a joint ceasefire committee, interdict criminals and
terrorists.
Murad Ebrahim appears to have no control over his men. That is a staggering
surprise, to say the least. I ask the same question: How in Allahs name could
the MILF be trusted to run even an autonomous barangay?
If 44 men were led to their graves just to pave the way for a glorious
resurrection of a disgraced friend and then satisfy ones salivation for the
Nobel Peace Prize, we have to decry betrayal. There is no other choice.