EDITORIAL - Kid gloves

As soon as word was out about the massacre in Maguindanao, Buluan town Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu had publicly accused his political rival, Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., of leading the slaughter. Mangudadatu based his accusations on a cell phone call from his wife Genalyn, who managed to describe to him the atrocity being perpetrated before she herself was brutally murdered.

Ampatuan is no stranger to the Mangudadatus, and Genalyn could not have erred in identifying the leader of the killers. The two clans are related, and the Buluan mayor has been receiving death threats in connection with his plan to challenge the Ampatuans for governor of Maguindanao in 2010. There is no other challenger to the governor’s post, currently held by another member of the Ampatuan clan. At the massacre site, a backhoe bearing the markings of the Maguindanao government, with the name of Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., was found. Who sent that heavy equipment to a remote, hilly area, and why? Who operated it?

And yet investigators, obviously taking their cue from Malacañang officials, have shown utmost reluctance in questioning any of the Ampatuans. President Arroyo has declared a state of emergency and proclaimed a day of national mourning as the United Nations led the international condemnation of the slaughter. Beyond the official mourning and the rhetoric about getting the culprits, the President must show decisive action in going after her staunch political allies. As it is, the military cannot even get proper cooperation from the local police.

Every day a new horrific detail is unearthed, literally, in connection with the massacre. Yesterday search teams, using heavy equipment, dug up three vehicles and pulled out bodies and body parts belonging to at least six more victims, bringing to 52 the official number of those slaughtered in the town of Ampatuan. Initial reports said the bodies were chopped to pieces with a chainsaw so the parts could be jammed into the victims’ vehicles and buried together in the mass grave on the hill. This was a premeditated, well-planned operation.

In the face of this terrible atrocity, authorities should have quickly grabbed, or “invited for questioning,” the one and only person who has been tagged by the aggrieved side as the perpetrator. But until yesterday, the Philippine National Police still would not even invite Mayor Ampatuan for questioning. There is no order preventing the mayor from leaving the country.

This is a crime against humanity, and authorities should apprehend not just the principal killers. Anyone who aids and abets the perpetrators must be arrested and held accountable. But at the rate the government is going, all the mass murderers will go scot-free.