Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas has been going around the country to condole with the families of the police commandos who perished in the Mamasapano massacre. By personally conveying his sympathies with words and financial assistance, Roxas is making amends after having been chastened by his own remarks that the slaughter of the SAF innocents was a “misencounter.”
During his visit in Cebu to the wake of PO1 Windel Candano over the weekend, Roxas told Windel’s widow, Michelle, that the government will support her plans of joining the elite PNP-SAF if that is her wish. Apparently, Roxas heard about Michelle wanting to follow her husband’s footsteps so the DILG Secretary tried to follow it up during his visit here last Saturday.
I heard that Michelle was polite but not very positive of the government’s offer to help. It’s a shared sentiment among the families of the Fallen 44 because they are not seeking entitlements. Their minimum demand is simply truth and justice, which unfortunately, have become muddled and distant with each passing day.
President Aquino has gone on national television twice to try to explain what happened in Mamasapano but instead of directly addressing questions like, who really was on top of the operation, why was the military and the PNP echelon kept out of the loop, etc. he left these issues hanging.
The latest report that had netizens and political observers reacting violently pointed to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation as on top of the secret operation to extract two high-valued Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists from the MILF lair. How true are reports that an American soldier perished in the attack, and that the SAF merely provided cover for the foreign force in going to the MILF lair?
The Manila Times report (“Pnoy Ordered AFP, SAF to Stand Down,” February 05, 2015) implied to me that the SAF went on a suicide mission.
Scrappy details appear to support this angle, like the point raised by dzMM and ANC program host Karen Davila during a radio broadcast. She wondered why the SAF used only text messages to communicate with whoever was in command at the time they were being slaughtered by Muslim rebels. One SAF soldier even ran out of cellphone load and had to ask his wife for “reinforcements.”
No wonder it took the military 16 hours to pull out the police commandos from the battle scene but when help came, 43 lives had already been lost. The SAF is said to be an elite force, but where were the high-frequency transceivers during this operation?
I also overheard Michelle Candano saying over a TV news interview how her husband Windel told her via SMS that he was having a difficult time driving to Maguindanao.
The trip from their jump-off point to Mamasapano was supposed take only 24 hours but according to Michelle, it took two days for her husband to reach Maguindanao because the vehicle he was driving conked out twice along the way. The widow commented it was a portent of something bad happening to her husband and the SAF mission.
I cannot imagine a high-level operation to capture Malaysian terrorist Marwan and his Filipino confederate Basit Usman merited only meager logistical support from the government. The anti-terrorist council headed by Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa is funded with P500 million. This is an office directly under President Aquino. Will the BOI summon Ochoa or even President Aquino to shed light on this matter?
It is easy to understand why the public and families of the SAF 44 are not keen on the government investigation. The board has yet to begin its work today but President Aquino already absolved Alan Purisima from any responsibility.
If anybody is afraid of the BOI, it is certainly not Alan Purisima, whose line of reasoning is rather pure: he was suspended at that time, how could he be on top of the operation?
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As I write, Cebu Daily News celebrates its 17th anniversary with the theme, “Inspiring Change.”
It’s tough to focus on the celebration with Mamasapano as backdrop but for now, I’d like to drop a personal note and say thank you CDN for the inspiration to write about social issues for the past 17 years. It’s not easy to keep writing and chasing deadlines twice a week but I consider it a rare privilege. In the sense that CDN is part of my personal journey, my best wishes for the paper on this milestone is personally felt and shared.
Happy birthday, CDN!