Reaping the Whirlwind

“They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7), thus says the Holy Bible.

A whirlwind of unspeakable evil has indeed struck the country when members of Mangudadatu clan, including a number of women, their staff and several local media people were massacred last Monday. As of late yesterday afternoon, 47 bodies have been recovered thus far. Members of political rival Ampatuan clan have been pointed to as the perpetrators.

It broke the local cultural and religious taboo that spares women from direct violence. Perhaps half of the victims, 20 of them, were women. Electoral violence among rival political families especially in that part of the country is not entirely surprising but the extent and manner of the killing is one of a kind. This irrational outburst of violence numbs the mind, but some kind of logic or reason may be retrieved by tracing its roots.

Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan, Sr., the patriarch of the clan is a last-termer having served 9 years as governor. He has made known the family’s intention to have his son, Andal, Jr. to succeed him in this coming election. However, the Mangudadatu family, had other plans. Its head, Esmael also wanted to be governor. His wife, Jenalyn Tiamzon-Mangudadatu, led a party accompanied by several journalists to file her husband’s certificate of candidacy when they were abducted and summarily executed.

In the 2007 election, it was Gov. Andal Ampatuan who delivered a 12-0 result in favor of the administration’s senatorial slate. In 3 towns, the opposition candidates got zero votes. Andal Ampatuan’s political closeness with government actually dates further during the Marcos regime. As vice-mayor of Maganoy in Maguindanao, he cast his lot with the military in its war against the MNLF. The military then armed Ampatuan’s vigilantes; thus started his career as a big-time political warlord. In the Estrada government’s all-out war against the MILF Andal Ampamatuan was their point man, and was picked the administration’s bet for governor in the 2001 election. In that election, some precincts were inside military camps and his opponents’ watchers were not allowed to go inside in other precincts. He easily defeated Candao, a suspected MILF supporter.

At present Gov. Andal Ampatuan is said to be in command of least 500 armed civilians and two special auxiliary units of CAFGU detailed by the military. In 2006, DILG Sec. Ronaldo Puno issued a memorandum authorizing civilian volunteer organizations (CVOs) in Mindanao to bear arms. Both in the 2001 and the 2004 presidential elections, the Ampatuan clan proved to be enormously successful in delivering votes to administration candidates. The 12-0 turnout in 2007 is even more impressive.

There you are. A succession of administrations owe to the Ampatuan clan political and military debts. He has been true and able to do his end of the bargain. The Philippine government has sown the wind and now reaps the whirlwind. It's the Ampatuan clan’s special role in the government’s political and military objectives that gave wind to its ascension to absolute domination of Maguindanao politics. Now, the whole nation and perhaps the whole world are watching how the Arroyo government and the military would tame the whirlwind of its own creation.

In the forthcoming elections, candidates especially at the national level are again engaged in sowing the wind. These politicians appear to be so desperate in winning that they would compromise even their souls in order to get elected. They are making alliances in every kind with power brokers of all kinds. In so doing, they will be legitimizing the powers that have long dominated, oppressed and terrorized the people. Like the present government, they will be complicit and should be held liable to other explosions of violence against innocent victims.

It is in this light that the people, the voting populace, should view the political consolidation of the various political parties. What kind of people at the local levels are they having alliances with? People at the grassroots know what kind of people these dominant political families are. If it’s difficult to know the real characters of individual presidential candidates, we can judge them by the character of local political figures they bring into their political circles. That’s how we ought to judge them.