Candid moments

Our second favorite presidential spokesperson (after AbCerge Remonde), Lore n Lei Fajardo, has been relegated to the freezer, according to Palace officials.

Malacañang let on yesterday that President Arroyo was displeased with Fajardo’s reassurance to the public, delivered in Lore n Lei’s patented unctuous style, that the slaughter of 57 people in the scenic hills of Maguindanao on Nov. 23 was not reason enough for GMA to sever her friendship with her staunch allies, the Ampatuan clan.

We should send Fajardo a letter congratulating her for the uncharacteristic candor. The statement, issued as gruesome photos of the massacre victims started flooding the Internet, was one of the most honest assessments of the mood at Malacañang in those early hours, when both the Ampatuans and administration officials kept professing their undying love for each other.

The biggest lament of Palace officials in those first hours after the massacre was that they had tried but failed to patch up the differences between the Ampatuans and their distant relatives, the rival Mangudadatus.

Now, with all the grisly details being provided by state witnesses about the slaughter, the Palace is scrambling to put distance between the President and her allies.

We’re waiting for the Ampatuans, led by their patriarch, resigned Maguindanao governor Andal Senior, to indicate whether he also wants to burn his bridges with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. This clan does not look kindly on fair-weather friends, and it has an unnerving tendency to strike back.

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As of Wednesday afternoon, Andal Senior was supposed to be recovering from sore eyes in a military hospital, where he has been held incommunicado since his arrest in Davao for rebellion.

Pretty soon Senior, who is relatively young and healthy, will have to run out of ailments that will warrant his hospital confinement under heavy military security.

He may want to check on his son, Andal Junior, who is held without bail for multiple murder, also under maximum security, at the National Bureau of Investigation main office in Manila.

Last week some NBI officials were trying to sell to the media a bizarre story about a plot to spring Junior from NBI detention, which warranted further tightening security around the compound. This claim was based on the purported discovery of a van abandoned too many blocks away from the NBI to give the story credibility. Lore n Lei could have done a better job of selling that story.

But considering the violent history and controversial political alliances of the clan, the threat to the detained Ampatuans’ safety cannot be taken lightly.

There are at least three groups that could want Andal father and son killed, and have the capacity to carry it out.

One is the MILF, against whom the Ampatuans have been waging a brutal battle for several years. Another is an older foe, Nur Misuari’s Moro National Liberation Front, which the Ampatuans helped the Marcos regime fight.

A third group is the most dangerous. Junior has reason to fear poisoning and being strangled to death in his sleep in a maximum-security state detention facility, and Senior should have the same worry under military detention.

Before any of that macabre scenario materializes, senators should compel Ampatuan Senior to tell his version of the rise and fall of his clan.

That story we will never hear from administration officials. But that story is necessary to obtain full justice for the 57 people who were gunned down, crushed with a backhoe, mutilated and chopped to pieces in the hillside of Ampatuan town on Nov. 23.

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We might have a chance to hear that story when the trial of the Ampatuans finally gets underway in the Regional Trial Court of Quezon City.

The spunky judge who accepted the case yesterday — and refused the bodyguards offered by the Philippine National Police — is a woman. We don’t know if Jocelyn Solis-Reyes is prepared to eat death threats for breakfast, like QC judge-turned-senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago. But Solis-Reyes looks like she has the courage and determination to uncover the whole truth about the worst post-war atrocity in this country.

Poor Judge Luisito Cortez, who begged off from handling the case, will go down in history for cowardice. He probably feared not just the Ampatuans but also those who might pressure him to go easy on the clan.

It is not enough for the courts to determine who pulled the trigger and used the backhoe and the chainsaws. The public wants to know who gave the green light for the massacre, and who participated in the planning.

The public also wants to know how such a culture of impunity, already present in varying degrees in many other parts of the country, reached a level that paved the way for the slaughter in Maguindanao.

People who carry out that kind of barbarity obviously believe they can get away with the crime. Why would the Ampatuans, accused of planning and carrying out the massacre, believe they could get away with such a crime against humanity?

The answer we will never hear from the likes of Lore n Lei, though she has her unguarded, candid moments.

Truth and justice: those are rare commodities in this country. A lot is expected of Jocelyn Solis-Reyes.