DOWN SOUTH
Tectonic movement
In the wake of the most terrible election-related violence in the Philippines, forces are at work to bring Maguindanao and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) back into some semblance of order. By semblance of order, I suspect they’re working to restore the socio-politic-economic conditions before Monday’s massacre. It is ironic that what many decried to be less than ideal conditions before Monday is seen today as something preferable after all.
Monday shook up the order of things.
At the eye of the spinning centrifuge is the Ampatuan clan. Indeed, there’s seemingly nowhere we can turn to these days where the name is not synonymous to an epithet, a curse, a blasphemy even. By the looks of things, we’re not done bashing the name yet. It makes me sad for a young boy I know named Ampatuan. He is such a polite, happy child. I’d like to think that this 12-year-old would someday bring honor to his name. For now, he has to live with the aversion his name evokes in people who don’t even know him.
Since Monday, the average kibitzer’s sentiment says the Ampatuans brought this upon themselves. From the salesclerk at the mall’s shoe section to the taxi driver to the restroom attendant at the moviehouse to the priest at noon mass today – they all have a story to tell about how the Ampatuans set themselves apart from ordinary mortals: They don’t fall in line, they don’t wait their turn, and they bring armed bodyguards where the rest of us are required to surrender even our nail cutters.
They have cars so expensive that the price of one could feed an entire village for ten years. It borders perhaps on more exaggeration how in Davao the Ampatuans reportedly bought a whole floor of condominium apartments, a whole warehouse of generator sets, a whole block of prime residential property–or was it properties?
Me – well, I refer to the Ampatuans as the ambulance. You happen to be on the road when their long line of black, expensive cars is out, you had better take the wayside and let them pass. Not only are their drivers trained to get ahead of every other car, one lives in fear of getting too near something that invites mortar fire.
As their cars are viewed, so too are their mansions. I suspect that if houses in Juna and Nova Tierra were movable, the residences next door to the Ampatuan fortresses would have relocated. Failing that, the neighbors must have raised their life insurance premiums to protect the next generation.
But that is all about the Ampatuans in Davao. The Ampatuans in Maguindanao are a different story.
In Maguindanao, the order of things is for them to be at the upper end of wealth distribution and that is where they have been for some time now. Such was the order of things when Maguindanao became part of the ARMM. Today, the Ampatuans hold political power not only in Maguindanao, but also in the ARMM.
It hasn’t always been that way. At least four former high-ranked commanders of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) I talked to last year understand that the 1996 Final Peace Agreement carried a gentleman’s agreement for the ARMM governorship to always be in MNLF hands. This would allow for the political will to push for the realization of the terms of the 1996 FPA. For a while, they said, that gentleman’s agreement was honored.
Then, as former MNLF combatants settled and took leadership in mainstreaming their resident communities in synergy with government efforts for social uplift, development work kept them busy and gratified that they slowly laid down their arms at their own volition. After more than a decade of investing in peaceable efforts, the MNLF brought itself into a position where it would be hardpressed to take up arms again. And today, the governorship of the ARMM is not in the hands of the MNLF. This state of affairs does not make the former MNLF combatants very happy. They feel that without the ARMM leadership in tune to the spirit of the 1996 FPA, the peace agenda would not be served or pursued.
It seems that the national government does not share the MNLF’s concern with the 1996 FPA and its erstwhile intentions. It is however concerned with its peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Today’s ARMM governorship is a reminder to the MILF that the national leadership has a power base in the contested territory.
With the MNLF alienated from the corridors of government power and the MILF reminded that theirs is not the only Muslim might in the ARMM, some semblance of order indeed is in place, one that serves the interest of the current administration. There is little by way of commitment to the peace process that the PGMA administration has demonstrated so far, save for lip service. It does seem interested in a semblance of order, for things to stay the way they are. For, with the wealth distribution glaringly disparate, with violence always a threat in the horizon, with the unending post-conflict rehabilitation needs just crying out to be met, Maguindanao and the ARMM keep development funds coming in.
Monday’s massacre made us all sit up for the brazen display of violence and atrocity committed on women, media, and ordinary commuters who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. People mercilessly strafed and herded to their death. In death, their pockets were turned inside out, divested of valuables they won’t need in the afterlife. The sheer soul-numbing ghoulish horror of it renders us all panicked and incoherent.
It takes us a while to question how the power base is realigning in the ARMM and who in the end gets to benefit from it all.
