MANILA
The Philippines’ New Year didn’t start auspiciously. Besides the usual pandemonium on New Year’s Eve with deafening and asphyxiating neighborhood fireworks, the early days of the year have brought deaths and intriguing mystery.
The New Year was barely a week old when a spate of gun violence exploded in different parts of the country. The most controversial was a shootout/rubout between police and alleged criminals in Atimonan town in Quezon province, south of Manila. Earlier, a gun fancier suddenly went berserk and sprayed children with bullets, killing several of them. And, during the New Year’s Eve fireworks in Manila and other urban centers, a young girl in Caloocan City and a younger boy in Mandaluyong City, both suburbs of Manila, were hit and killed by stray bullets fired by still unknown but brainless people as they celebrated the coming of 2013.
A US Navy minesweeper, the USS Guardian, ran aground in the Tubbataha Reefs off southern Philippines, putting at peril the coral-rich area, a world-heritage site. As usual, the US embassy has said very little about the incident involving one of the United States’ naval craft. The Philippine government isn’t saying very much, either.
And, in the Senate, a different kind of fireworks. Key members of the upper house of the legislature are fighting over money, given out as freebie allowances by the senate president.
The police “shootout” in Quezon province has been occupying precious newspaper space and both television and radio airtime. Thirteen people, including police and military officers and a suspected gambling lord, died in the bloody incident. The head of the police team got shot but didn’t die. More than 200 rounds of ammunition were fired, leaving the two SUVs of the suspected criminals pockmarked with bullets. If you look at the vehicles in the aftermath of the shootings, you would easily conclude that no one got spared in the supposed gun battle. And, indeed, no one lived to tell the real story about the incident.
The controversy revolves about suspicion, especially among the relatives of the dead, that the encounter wasn’t a shootout as claimed by the police. It was a “rubout,” assert the families of the dead. The police (and members of the military who were with the police in the encounter) insist otherwise, pointing out that the team’s leader also sustained several gunshot wounds in the incident.
Suspicion abounds that the incident is an offshoot of criminal rivalry, involving illegal gambling and other activities like hired killings.
President Benigno Aquino III is skeptical of the police’s version and has ordered an independent investigation. Early reports on the investigation being conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) hint at a premeditated ambush of the suspected criminals. This may indeed be a case of a criminal group eliminating a rival gang. What is troubling about the case is the involvement of police and military personnel, which buttresses widespread public suspicion or knowledge that government security forces often dip their hands into criminal activity all over the country.
The senseless killings of young children during New Year’s Eve festivities and the gangland-style killings of suspected criminals (and the recent shootings in the United States) have again generated protests about widespread ownership of guns among civilians. Anti-gun activists have revived their perennial calls for the ban of guns outside of homes and licensed practice-shooting galleries. Predictably, equally vocal gun advocates oppose such moves.
The gun debate mirrors the current situation in the United States. The main difference is that President Obama has announced anti-gun initiatives with potentially far-reaching effect, while President Aquino, who is a gun enthusiast, is lukewarm to a total ban of private guns in public.
The debate here will not be settled soon but, rather, will continue until President Aquino exerts political will and takes decisive measures to limit gun ownership. But first, of course, he will have to change his mind about the proliferation of guns in this gun-happy country.
Back at the Senate, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, has stirred a hornet’s nest by being selective about allotting largesse to his fellow senators. Claiming that the upper chamber has saved a certain amount of its budget, Enrile gave P1.6 million to each senator except four senators to whom he only gave P250,000. It didn’t take long for Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who is known for her tart tongue, to publicly whine over what she called discrimination because she and the other three (Sens. Alan Cayetano and his sister Pia, and Antonio Trillanes) had been thorns in Enrile’s side over the past year. In other words, the four senators had been naughty, according to Santa Johnny, so their Christmas presents were correspondingly small.
Unacceptable, cried Santiago, who is known for her terrorizing tirades against public witnesses called to Senate inquiries. She then gave back Enrile’s P250,000, ostensibly in retaliation for Enrile’s return of her Christmas present of biscuits from her home province. Petty? Ha, but that’s pretty much the norm among our noble legislators.
Filipinos can’t leave well enough alone. The past year had been a sort of a banner year, with detectable improvements in the economy, in governance and even in the people’s general attitudes about their social responsibilities as citizens. And yet, the new year is only now just a month old and controversies already beset society.
The problem with guns is the major issue because of the lethal effect on people. Government officials, starting with the President, gun fanciers, and civil activists must put their heads together and come up with a viable compromise in order to make the country safe from senseless and unnecessary deaths by guns. No country can claim to be civilized if its citizens go on a rampage every now and then and kill innocent people, especially children who’s only crime is being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The noise at the Senate involving money is nothing more than noise. The use or abuse of public money is of course a legitimate issue and must be resolved, involving the government’s auditors. But the noisy exchange among senators, calling each other “crooks,” should not be made into another spectacle to divert the public’s attention from the real and major crimes among government officials. Contrived controversies such as the selective allotment of allowances among senators are ploys that government officials (as well as the economic elite) foist upon the people to entertain them and therefore avert their vigilant eyes off the real crimes that take place, like the systematic looting of the government’s coffers by public officials, both elected and appointed.
The economic and political elite are happy when the people are distracted by artificial controversies. Because then they can carry on with their activities that help them to steal the people’s money, stay in power and control how the country is run.
Happy New Year? Heaven help us.
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Food for thought. The press exists to tell the story of Man and the world around him. It can often be powerful in that it has the benefit of reach. But it is, in essence, just a messenger. It doesn’t make or make up the news, it just delivers it. And if, or when, it doesn’t report just the truth or when it reports untruths, then there are forms or forums for redress. One of those forums, of course, is the marketplace of ideas. That is where public discourse or debate takes place. And there is where issues are resolved. In the end, it is good to remember the media motto that the press is there to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
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