Philippines President Aquino should be impeached, then jailed with Roxas over Mamasapano

President Aquino 3rd’s sudden reference to an “alternative truth” to the massacre of 44 Special Action For troops in Mamasapano convinces me – again – that there is something deeply wrong in this person’s psyche.

 

Was the Mamasapano massacre such a trauma for him, over which he has been probably having psychotic nightmares, that he wants to create an entirely different narrative of that day of infamy for our Republic?

 

Or is he so afraid that he won’t escape accountability in the next administration that he wants to change while he is in power the accepted, proven accounts of what happened in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, on Jan. 25, 2015?

The President’s favorite newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer, as usual, jumped to Aquino’s aid by running “alternative” narratives of the massacre in its front pages the next two days.

One was woven by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front which claims that the terrorist Marwan wasn’t killed by the SAF, but by his own aides, who were after $5 million bounty on his head put up by the US. That certainly robs the SAF of their victory, and makes the massacre of the 44 useless. That fits with Aquino’s implicit narrative that the SAF were massacred because their leaders didn’t coordinate with the army, and even were foolhardy to risk talks.

Yesterday the other “alternative” narrative reported by the newspaper implies that the SAF weren’t really as good a force as they were depicted. Either US operatives or their mercenaries directed and undertook the operation, with two even killed in it.

The article according to the newspaper, was based on a video clip by an identified “TV journalist”. This is rather strange since any journalist whether local or foreign, print or broadcast would claim such a scoop for his own, and not give it to another news outfit.

This is disgusting.

The massacre of our best fighting men the SAF 44 is one of the worst failings, if not the very worst failing, of Aquino.

 

Aquino should be impeached, and after stepping down from office in 2016, he should be jailed for his complicity in the operations that resulted in 44 SAF troops massacred.

His right-hand man, Manuel Roxas 2nd, could have intervened to save the police’s SAF, since the PNP was after all under his responsibility, as chairman of the National Police Commission. According to his sworn statements in the Senate hearings he was told of the operation early morning, and by mid-morning of the SAF’s difficulties. He didn’t lift a finger to give the SAF troops aid, even as he was with Aquino the whole day.

Roxas should be barred
And he wants us to elect him as commander-in-chief of all the Republic’s armed forces? Forget every blunder he’s done, forget his mismanagement of the MRT-3 and the Yolanda disaster management. His complicity in the Mamasapano massacre alone should bar him from having any public office, appointive or elective.

Aquino, Roxas, and the AFP chief Voltaire Gazmin were together in Zamboanga the whole day, yet they pretended that nothing was happening.

The details of Aquino’s complicity have been incontrovertibly established as facts. They leave no room for any “alternative truths”:

Aquino was on top of planning ever since it was conceived in mid-2014, and even had three meetings in Malacañang with suspended police chief Alan Purisima and then SAF head police chief superintendent Getulio Napeñas, and even intelligence officer Fernando Mendez. However it was illegal for Aquino have had as operations man his bosom friend, Purisima, who had already been suspended by the Ombudsman at that time.

For that, Purisima was charged by the Ombudsman for usurpation of authority. But it was Aquino who ordered him to usurp authority. Why isn’t he made accountable? Could Purisima refuse an order of the President, his close friend?

He was on top of the entire operation as the tragedy was unraveling on January 25. He even boasted in an impromptu speech before the SAF two days later that “Maaga pa lang, tuloy tuloy na ang mga ulat na natatanggap namin.” (Early in the morning, I was already receiving reports on the operation.)

He was with his top security officials in Zamboanga City that day, starting early in the morning up to dusk, on the pretext of checking on a bombing incident two days before.

His planned scenario though was for him to immediately to go to Cotabato City, an hour by helicopter, to congratulate the SAF troopers for their capture of the global terrorists in Mamasapano, and to boast how he himself was on top of he operation.

Yet even when he had received reports that the SAF troopers were pinned down and begging for artillery and air support, Aquino did nothing.

Stand down
It wasn’t that he was stupid or was paralyzed to rescue the troopers. The chairman emeritus of this newspaper, Dante Ang, had reported based on his reliable sources that Aquino actually ordered the army to stand down, as their efforts to rescue the SAF troopers allegedly would risk his peace talks with the MILF. This claim has not been refuted.

Aquino and Purisima have covered up for the President’s complicity. The transcript of Purisima’s cellphone conversations with him that was submitted to the Senate hearing had a yawning eight-hour gap, which is impossible. No one in the Senate he controls, not even Senator Poe, had the guts to subpoena Globe or PLDT if in that eight hours, Aquino sent text messages or talked to Purisima.

Of course Globe and PLDT would not, as they have claimed, kept the actual text messages in their data bank. All that’s needed are the logs whether Aquino and Purisima’s cellphones were sending messages to each other during those eight hours, which the telcos explained they have (how would they charge you if they didn’t?).

US President Nixon fell from power to a great extent because he could not explain an 18-minute gap in tapes of his conversations with his officials involved in the Watergate scandal. Here, Aquino and Purisima can’t explain an eight-hour gap that could have established without a shadow of a doubt whether or not the commander-in-chief allowed his troops to be massacred.

Senator Grace Poe-Llamanzares exploited the investigation in the Senate, lucky for her as she was head of the committee on public order which had jurisdiction over the issue. The investigation catapulted her to national attention, so much so that she thinks she can be president — because of her seeming boldness in declaring that “Aquino must own up to the responsibility for the massacre.”

But she in effect aborted her committee’s report by not submitting it to the plenary for discussion. Technically therefore, her report, which she announced in a press conference in March, five months ago is still pending. i.e., without conclusions. Llamanzares was in the best position to call for deeper investigation over Aquino’s role that led to the massacre. She didn’t.

What kind of a country have we become, when our Congress has lost all its values, and all its balls that it can’t bring justice to the massacre of our best troops?

What kind of country have we become that a President dare think he can revise history with the help of his favorite newspaper, so he won’t be haunted any longer by nightmares of SAF troops shot point-blank in the face by Muslim insurgents?

FB: Bobi Tiglao