There’s no doubt that Bohol province will recover from the aberration that is the aborted Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom spree even with some of them still in hiding as of this writing.
The military said “only a few” of the bandits remain and it would be unlikely that they would stir enough trouble to attract the attention of both the military and police since they can ill afford an armed confrontation with them.
Speculations abound that they are in one of the caves near the two previous firefight scenes in Clarin and Inabanga towns, and it would be the height of incredulity if they somehow manage to penetrate the security net thrown all over the province’s exit and entry points.
The Abu’s “ace in the hole,” Supt. Maria Christina Nobleza, is in Camp Crame for interrogation, and it remains to be seen who their contacts will risk, springing them from their hideout.
We hope it’s only a matter of time before the military and police capture the remaining bandits so the people of Bohol province, particularly the residents of the two towns who were temporarily evacuated to make way for the military to hit these bandits hard and send them scampering to parts unknown within the province.
Until they are captured and presented to the public, their lurking presence will continually be a source of concern, albeit small if the tourists try to avoid the places isolated from the town or city proper where assistance cannot be readily available a phone call or text message away.
In the meantime, the Bohol provincial government together with their stakeholders are doing what they can to drum up interest among domestic and foreign tourists, and it seemed as if the tourist influx is unaffected based on the large turnout of visitors to Tubigon town’s annual fiesta.
In case the Abu Sayyaf bandits didn’t notice, Bohol province survived the devastation wrought by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake of 2013 and also withstood the damage inflicted by Super Typhoon Yolanda that same year.
It will take more than a couple of admittedly dangerous bandits to inflict damage and weaken the resolve of Boholanos, some of whom had the presence of mind to notify the presence of the Abu Sayyaf to the police and the military.
Too bad that the military and the police took for granted a previous US advisory as well as a warning by the Asturias police on their Facebook page about the presence of the bandits in Central Visayas.
And when they did encounter these bandits, it was unfortunate that they failed to defeat and capture them and that they sustained casualties among their troops and some of the residents.
These are hard lessons to learn from and costly to forget yet we hope that the incident served to remind the military, police and citizenry to never let their guard down and to remain vigilant against these pernicious, persistent threat to society.
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