LEADERS of the Liberal Party (LP) and United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) expressed shock and surprise when they learned that members of the Ampatuan clan were running under their respective banners in next year’s midterm elections.
Members of the clan are on trial for perpetrating the worst political massacre in Philippine history.
Without confirming exactly how many Ampatuans were running for the LP, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda defended the decision to recruit them, saying that they did not share the same “brand of politics” as the accused.
Nine Ampatuans are running for various elective posts under the administration LP, while 34 are running under UNA, according to a report from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).
In all, 72 members of the clan are running as candidates in next year’s elections, said the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines. They are mostly candidates for local level positions in Maguindanao province, such as town mayor and seats on local government councils.
The revelations sparked outrage on the third anniversary of the massacre, in which 58 people died, with critics saying that the Ampatuan clan’s enduring political influence underlined the country’s “culture of impunity.”
“That some clan members are running under the banner of President [Benigno] Aquino [3rd]’s party is a serious cause for concern because it imparts a damaging message that impunity is alive and well,” Human Rights Watch’s Carlos Conde told Agence France-Presse.
Following the revelation, the LP announced that it is bent on purging members of the Ampatuan clan from the electoral process next year.
Sen. Franklin Drilon, LP campaign manager for the 2013-midterm elections, said that he would push for the revocation of the certificates of nomination and acceptance (CONAs) issued to members of the Ampatuan clan for next year’s polls.
Personally, Drilon said that he does not want a single member of the Ampatuan clan to be included in the administration party.
“We will not allow,” remarked Drilon when he was asked to comment on the report by the PCIJ that some members of the Ampatuan clan would run under the administration party in next year’s polls.
He also admitted that the LP leadership was not aware of the report because the signing of CONAs
has been delegated to their local leaders.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, who served as the campaign manager for the LP during the 2010 polls, went with Drilon’s stance.
Abad underscored that the LP, as a policy, gives the power to decide LP’s congressional, gubernatorial and city mayoralty candidates to the party’s national leadership, which in this case includes Drilon. The selection of local candidates such board members, mayors and councilors, on the other hand, are left to the discretion of the local candidates themselves.
“Ordinarily, that policy should not pose a problem and is in fact preferred by said candidates being more familiar with local political dynamics. But of course, because of the massacre, Maguindanao is exceptional. So this has to be taken up in the national leadership,” Abad said in a text message.
The UNA led by Vice President Jejomar Binay and former president Joseph Estrada has vowed to drop any member of the Ampatuan clan who might have secured CONAs from the coalition, an UNA official said.
UNA Secretary General Tobias Tiangco, who also represents Navotas City in the House of Representatives, made the statement in light of the report of the PCIJ that UNA had 34 members of the Ampatuan clan are running under its banner for the 2013 elections.
The Ampatuan clan gained notoriety because witnesses of the Maguindanao massacre—which killed at least 58 people in November 23, 2009—have pointed to Andal Ampatuan Sr. and Andal Ampatuan Jr., as the masterminds of the gory killings.
The Maguindanao massacre trial is moving at a snail’s pace because there are at least 100 suspects who have been arrested, thus far, and many are still at large.
“I am asking PCIJ to furnish us with the CONAs of the Ampatuan family so we could validate them with our records. If indeed an Ampatuan charged in the massacre had been given an UNA CONA, we will withdraw it immediately,” Tiangco said in a statement.
Tiangco’s statement leaves open the door for any Ampatuan to still run under the UNA banner, as long as they were not among the accused in the massacre.
But Tiangco insisted that UNA did not issue any CONA to any member of the Ampatuan family, arguing that there could be a misunderstanding because there are a handful of candidates who are seeking UNA’s endorsement.
“We did not issue CONAs to any member of the Ampatuan family. There are candidates who supposedly seek UNA’s endorsement but they do not use our CONA. They do this to prevent us from putting our own candidates,” Tiangco said.
Leaders of the clan, allied to then president and now Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of Pampanga province, are accused of carrying out the massacre to prevent a local rival from filing his candidacy for Maguindanao province governor position in 2010 elections.
Andal Ampatuan Sr., the patriarch and then governor of the province, and four of his sons are on trial, accused of planning or participating in the massacre.
Eighty-two people in total are on trial, many of whom are alleged members of the Ampatuans’ private army.
The victims included 32 media workers who were traveling in a convoy to report on the opposition candidate’s attempt to file election papers. The Ampatuans and their gunmen allegedly stopped the convoy and murdered everyone.
In the aftermath of the massacre, Arroyo was forced to cut political ties with the family, and its power base in Maguindanao, a Muslim-populated province plagued by violence, appeared to have been diminished.
Meanwhile, the trial continues to drag on with no signs of an end. Lawyers have said that it could take years, or even decades, for the proceedings to conclude amid the Philippines’ notoriously slow justice system.
Three witnesses for the prosecution have been killed over the past three years. The Ampatuans deny all charges against them.
By Ritchie A. Horario and Llanesca T. Panti, Manila Times - With A report from AFP
