Escape by helicopter? Talk about crazy videos

Is it now Triple Jeopardy, not just Double Jeopardy?

First the government doublecrossed the mutineers/rebels/putschists who surrendered at Oakwood last July 27, after a 20-hour stand-off, after being given the pledge they would be tried under the Articles of War, meaning "court martial" or the military justice system after they "returned to barracks".

Nobody’s arguing that the 296 to 321 or more mutineers be given light sentences or a mere slap on the wrist. Even if a terrible crime is established, "death by musketry". As we’ve pointed out, a court martial or military justice system can throw the book at them if the evidence warrants, but an unequivocal pledge was given by the government negotiators, led by Ambassador Roy A. Cimatu (who manfully continues to declare that the "Articles of War", not anything else, was the agreement). That pledge must be honored.

Remember the horrible alternative, if the rebels/putschists hadn’t laid down their arms and disarmed the explosives they had planted all over the neighborhood. A firefight would have resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, and, – who knows? – the Oakwood and Glorietta mall, and half the buildings surrounding the complex might have been reduced to rubble and ruins. How would that spectacle of death and destruction have played on local and international television, and over the next two years as millions of passers-by daily viewed the wreckage?

Instead, President Macapagal-Arroyo came out looking smiling, triumphant – and a stronger candidate for re-election. (C’mon, isn’t that in the agenda?)

Why the doublecross? Because the lawyers insist? Because the administration needs a longer and stronger rope in which to loop in bigger fish, and vacuum up more alleged conspirators? I’m not even worried, although it surely is in the law, that throwing the matter to Regional Trial Court Branch 13, with DILG Secretary Joey Lina and DOJ Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño fulminating that only civilian justice will suffice, that the detained mutineers are being placed in "double jeopardy". I’m concerned that the government’s pledges, its word of honor, will now no longer be believed by anybody.

Sure, there is a hardline core of opinion writers and in the population who want to grind the rebels underheel. But think of it: there will be many future negotiations, some of them in perhaps even more desperate and potentially more violent situations. In those instances, the rebels, coupsters, insurgents or hold-outs may no longer be willing to accept the government’s assurances.

For instance, important "peace talks" are being touted as about to begin between the GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). With longtime MILF Chieftain, Ustadz Hashim Salamat, dead from heart failure, possibly the new leadership under Al Haj Murad might be more amenable to a real peace agreement. Yet, the 10,000 men – which the MILF claims it has – may, in the end, refuse to lay down their weapons. They’ll say, "Baka ma-Oakwood kami!" (The government might "Oakwood" us – meaning, the GRP panel could betray its promises.)

The same will certainly be true of any renewed or forthcoming parleys with the National Democratic Front /New People’s Army. Why should the NPA cease hostilities, and surrender their weapons based on government assuran-ces? (Their present hardline stance, or course, precludes this). The Communists now have a new battlecry to justify their skepticism of government deals or preferred settlements. The NPA guerrillas will scoff: "Baka ma-Oakwood kami!"

* * *

The repercussions are endless.

The government must uphold the word of honor, palabra de honor, given by its negotiators. There can be no compromises about that, even though 40,000 lawyers scream, after the surrender, that dura lex sed lex. A pledge was given and it must be redeemed. Even from the practical standpoint, the dictum "government of laws and not of men" (which is, by the way, honored more in the breach than it its observance) cannot be upheld in a democratic Republic without honest policemen and patriotic soldiers to enforce it.

It’s when policemen and soldiers are corrupt, dispirited or demoralized that we get al-Ghozi "escapes", military "convertion" scandals, the looting of RSBS soldiers’ pension funds by the hundreds of millions, a breakdown of law and order, narco-trafficking, and – don’t forget – recurring kudeta-attempts and mutinies.

And now that’s this? The Triple Threat? The Overall Deputy Ombudsman Margarito Gervacio has just declared that the Department of Justice has no authority to conduct "preliminary investigation" of the complaints against the mutineers involved in the Oakwood mutiny.

Gervacio maintains that "the proper forum" is the Office of the Ombudsman. His argument is that under the Constitution and the Ombudsman Act of 1989, acts committed by all public officials will have to be investigated by the Office of the Ombudsman, not the DOJ! Indeed, it is being pointed out that there is an Ombudsman for the Military – since officers and soldiers are considered government officials and employees. Sanamagan. Those Magdalo mutineers are truly in the soup – and it’s Alphabet Soup. Everybody wants to boil them in snake-oil.

This is what happens when President GMA gets persuaded by the whisperers and roaring lions who surround her into opening up the Pandora’s Box of legal nitpicking and hair-splitting. The earnest, straightforward terms of "surrender" should have been adhered to: The Articles of War.

Honor requires it – and, without honor, how can there be law?

* * *

Speaking of the MILF, it looks like the Moro rebel group’s celebrity-spokesman is back in business. Eid Kabalu resurfaced on his favorite medium, radio, to "reveal" that a 40-minute video had been taken of the manner in which the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist, bomb-maker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, escaped last July 14 from Camp Crame. Salamabit. Kabalu claimed that according to the video footage taken (and allegedly smuggled out of the country to be shown on international television), al-Ghozi even got out by helicopter, showing that "someone powerful" arranged his getaway.

Everyone is already convinced that someone powerful, in fact an entire bunch of powerful assholes, arranged al-Killer’s embarrassing "escape", but – gee whiz – by helicopter? On second thought, why not? When you’re paying big bucks for a spectacular trick to outperform Houdini, why not go first-class?

Yet, I await this purported video. Anything in this age of electronics, cyberspace and computer imaging can be manufactured. Including film footage of a Cardinal making love to Godzilla – sex scenes involving Gay Bishops are no longer unmentionable.

For its part, our Armed Forces are acting strangely. There was no need to flood the Marawi area, Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur, with additional troops on the excuse that the operation is to catch al-Ghozi. You don’t need two Army brigades and a Marine brigade to capture a lone terrorist, or even two. What you need is to track al-Ghozi and company down through "intelligence" or informers, then dispatch a handpicked team to nab the rascal, while swatting away any protective force of rebels riding shotgun on him. Trampling large areas underfoot is ridiculous.

We’re hunting a man, or a small band of men, not a herd of elephants.

And why provoke the MILF by all those massive military movements when you’re trying to make "peace" with them?

Besides, don’t we need our army and marines elsewhere? While we’re concentrating too many troops in Mindanao, aren’t we leaving other vital islands and provinces unprotected? By telegraphing our military movements, in fact, we’re sending a message to our other enemies as to where we’re weak, inviting them to attack in force and overrun our depleted military units elsewhere. In the obsession to crush Moro rebellion, we seem to have forgotten that other, dangerous battle, the war against the NPA.

I’m not kidding when I say that we may be losing the fight against the NPA by our over-concentration on the Muslim insurgency. In the past year, top-secret intelligence reports in the National Security agency alarmingly disclose, our government has been losing more firearms to increased NPA agaw-armas activity than in the previous two years. Where it used to be five NPA cadres slain for every soldier or policeman killed in combat, the body count is now approximately one to one. It’s time to rethink our priorities.

What’s bothersome is that, as evidenced by that surprise and bloody raid in Samar not long ago, the Communist insurgents know when and where to strike with almost pinpoint ferocity.

Who’s giving them this "information"?

* * *

Might as well give you, Dear Reader, an updated report on the meeting held in the Camp Aguinaldo clubhouse last Saturday night, at which some officers of Philippine Military Academy class of 1966, the batchmates of embattled Defense Secretary Angelo T. Reyes, tried to get a "manifesto" signed by his Mistahs expressing all-out confidence in his honesty and integrity. I learned from several classmates that only about 36 or 38 attended, and, further, that only half of the class, counting those both absent and present, had affixed their signatures to the "manifesto".

I wonder how they will be able to publish Half a Manifesto, but what the heck, I suppose, to those who seem to need support, every little bit helps. I’d feel strange though, if my classmates had to meet to consider signing a document – let’s say for instance, attesting to my "virginity", or, let’s even say, my "senility".

One associate board member of PMA ’66 even rang me up yesterday to say he had warned his fellow board members not to publish such a "manifesto" lest they be called a "Malabanan Board". (I had to figure that one out for myself, but isn’t the Malabanan corporation the one that cleans out your septic tank? Anyway, the name sounds familiar somehow.)

In any event, one of the organizers of the meeting, retired Admiral Eriberto C. Varona, also phoned me yesterday to say that none of the classmates had been "pressured" to sign the "manifesto". The Admiral, who heads the Department of National Defense "Arsenal", asserted that his PMA classmates had simply gotten together to express their pakikisama support for the "unjustly maligned" Secretary Reyes. Okay, that’s what he assured me.

Other disgruntled PMA Sixty-sixers, however, continue to grumble into my ear.

Probably it’s just a tempest in a teapot, but since they’re all PMA Cavaliers, Sus, what can I say? The majority of commissioned officers in our armed forces were simple folk like you and me – we came from the old ROTC and the Infantry Training Group (ITG). It’s those glamour boys from the Trade School, the PMA, who stage all of the coups and mutinies, take the shiniest positions, and get all of the publicity. Oh, well. That’s the way life is.

It was the late General Charles de Gaulle, when he resigned as President of France, who remarked that "politics is too important to be left to the politicians". It has also been said that war is too important to be left to the generals. Neither, it turns out, peace should be left to the generals or admirals.