EDITORIAL - Forewarned

This has to be the only country where the national police spokesman discloses a likely terrorist plot to take him out. The spokesman said the threat was possibly in retaliation for his pronouncements during a foiled jailbreak that led to the deaths of three Abu Sayyaf commanders last week.

Whether the threat is real or imagined, don’t security threats go with a cop’s job description? The spokesman should take a cue from Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who once famously said that she ate death threats for breakfast. Anyway, for all the saliva he expended during the siege at Camp Bagong Diwa, give the spokesman a medal; maybe it will cure him of paranoia.

The story from the PNP spokesman merely added to the jitters in Metro Manila, where Holy Week rites started amid tight security in churches. Apparently going by the belief that forewarned is forearmed, Philippine National Police officials have been falling all over themselves giving the direst warnings of the looming end of the world as we know it, courtesy of the Abu Sayyaf. Because the source of the warnings are PNP officials themselves, you can be sure many foreign governments are dutifully updating their travel advisories — or whatever euphemism the Americans want to call them — warning of the high threat of terrorism in certain parts of the Philippines including Metro Manila.

Admittedly, the warnings may have some basis. The Abu Sayyaf’s Abu Solaiman reportedly issued a warning, although he seems to be speaking of a plan that has been in the works long before the siege in Bicutan. Terrorist suspect Gappal Banna, known as Boy Negro, is said to be another source of the story, although how he stumbled upon a plot to retaliate for an event that occurred long after he was nabbed for the Valentine’s Day bombing in Makati is a mystery. Was he given furlough to gather intelligence from his cohorts? Perhaps he was one of the two men speaking with a "Tausug accent" who had spooked the PNP spokesman at his home in Taguig.

In the age of terror, many governments have tightened security all around without announcing to the world that Apocalypse is just around the corner. We, on the other hand, have to make a big production out of every threat. Perhaps our lawmen are trying to make up for ignoring a warning about the plan by Abu Sayyaf inmates to break out of Camp Bagong Diwa.