There was nothing new with what President Rodrigo Duterte said about the second anniversary of the Mamasapano massacre but it didn’t dilute nor reduce the significance of what his message was as he centered it on those he deemed responsible for the tragedy.
As it is, President Duterte set his sights on his predecessor, former president Benigno Aquino III whom he blamed for the deaths of 44 Special Action Force (SAF) troopers.
That the President, a known leftist, also blamed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as being the architect of the operation is again, nothing new, regardless how many rallies were staged by the militants to denounce this fact.
One need only read the history books to know that the infamous US agency had been and will continue to be behind covert operations that seek to overthrow governments or change the country’s status quo in order to better serve US interests.
But knowing that, let’s focus on what the President said. Mr. Duterte blamed Aquino for failing to save the SAF troopers and relying only on disgraced former PNP chief Alan Purisima and former SAF commander Getulio Napeñas to oversee the whole operation, which to be fair, wasn’t a total failure.
They did get the terrorist Marwan but the cost was too great and evidence of his execution, a cut finger, was brought to the CIA for safe-keeping, never to be seen again.
Going beyond the cloak and dagger stuff, what it all boils down to is Mr. Aquino’s neglect of his police forces that borders on the criminal.
President Duterte’s first hand disclosure that Aquino asked one army general what could be done to salvage the situation after learning about the massacre only further rubs salt on the deep wounds that have yet to heal among the families of the victims and the country in general.
When Aquino issued his response denying any involvement in the massacre by blaming Napeñas for the debacle, Napeñas responded in kind by bluntly declaring that the former president had “no balls” by disavowing any responsibility for the tragedy unlike the incumbent president.
Napeñas may be trying to ingratiate himself to President Duterte but not a few Filipinos especially the families of the slain 44 SAF troopers could only agree with his assessment. The courts may absolve Mr. Aquino for any role in the massacre but public sentiment sees otherwise.
If anything the Mamasapano massacre only validated former senator Serge Osmeña’s opinion of former president Aquino as being “an honest man but a lousy administrator and manager.”
Two years after the tragedy, the families of the SAF troopers have yet to hear Aquino apologize for their loss. He may not have done so during his term to avoid being a lameduck president but now that he is out of office, maybe it’s high time he apologized.