EDITORIAL - 1,000 days

With another campaign period approaching, those seeking justice for the victims of the nation’s worst case of election violence yesterday marked 1,000 days since the massacre in Maguindanao was perpetrated. A major concern is whether there has been any significant change in the environment that made the perpetrators believe they could get away with the atrocity.

The impunity that led to the confirmed killings of 57 people, with another victim still unaccounted for, was surely encouraged by previous cases of deadly violence, although on a lesser scale, with no one held accountable. The mass killings arose from a clan feud over absolute power in one of the country’s poorest regions. In the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, pretty much everything used to be controlled by the Ampatuan clan, including votes. National leaders apparently liked this, and shrugged off reports of violence, corruption and abuse of power in the ARMM.

That sort of tolerance breeds impunity – the type that led to the brutal massacre on a remote hill in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town in November 2009. The elements that bred that impunity are still present, in varying degrees, in certain areas around the country. The threat of political violence is particularly high in local contests. With midterm elections approaching, the administration that has vowed to battle corruption and clean up the voting system must make sure this kind of impunity will not be manifested again.

In every electoral exercise in this country, dozens of people are killed – candidates and their supporters alike, and even individuals caught in the crossfire. The nation should stop accepting this situation as a normal part of the electoral process. If there’s a lesson that can be learned from the Maguindanao massacre, it’s the fact that even one death from election violence is one too many, and the impunity that it breeds can lead to mass murder.