EDITORIAL - Not so fast

In some parts of Mindanao, here’s the version of making hay while the sun shines: Kidnap, murder and sow terror while you can. When you’ve raised enough funds and have had your fill of adventure and excitement, make sure you can keep your loot for your retirement. How? Present yourself to the government as a rebel ready to return to the fold of the law. As sweetener, you can take some of your men with you. Why, you may even rat on your cohorts who refuse to give up.

It’s an enticing deal for a government whose armed forces can’t even get a ragtag band of less than a hundred Islamist guerrillas hiding in the hinterlands of Basilan. The leader of the Pentagon gang, Faisal Marohomsar, has reportedly sent surrender feelers to the government. Reports said Marohomsar had written President Arroyo, saying he wanted to yield and resume a normal life with his family. About 60 gang members were also ready to give up, Marohomsar wrote, if the government would give them livelihood and housing programs.

This is all very touching, were it not for the fact that the Pentagon gang is nothing but a bunch of hooligans, motivated neither by ideology nor fundamentalist faith but simply by money. In its greed the gang has shown no compunction in kidnapping and even murdering its victims. Last year the gang murdered two Chinese nationals working on a government project in North Cotabato. The gang still has Italian priest Giuseppe Pierantoni, who is feared to have been killed in a crossfire between two warring factions of the gang. Recently, health workers in Cotabato staged a strike to protest the abduction of a woman doctor by the Pentagon gang.

Marohomsar is trying to distance himself from these atrocities, saying the perpetrator and the one who benefited from the kidnappings was a certain Tahir Alonto, said to be a nephew of Ebrahim Murad, vice chairman for military affairs of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. This looks more like a case of swindling over ransom money. Military and local officials have long insisted that the Pentagon gang is merely the fund-raising arm of the MILF, which incidentally has also been accused of helping the Abu Sayyaf.

Why should the government bail out Marohomsar from his troubles with Alonto? If Marohomsar wants to surrender, fine. But he’ll have to go straight to jail instead of home to his dear family. Last we looked, ransom kidnapping and murder were still capital offenses in this country.