PRESIDENT Aquino’s nationwide address Friday night was the latest in a series of half-hearted gestures from the Palace to defuse the public outrage over the killing of 44 police commandos by Moro rebels and this administration’s tepid response to the atrocity.
Almost two weeks after the bloodbath in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, the President finally accepted some responsibility for the mismanaged operation to capture or kill the notorious Malaysian terrorist known as Marwan.
“This tragedy happened under my administration, and I will carry this until my dying days,” he said. “They were my responsibility, together with the entire SAF involved in this operation.”
Nobody disputes this assessment, but it is disturbing that the President only thought to give voice to it at this late date, instead of a day or two after the massacre, when it might have made a difference.
The rest of Mr. Aquino’s address exposed this claim of responsibility as meaningless rhetoric, as he all but crucified the sacked Special Action Forces commander, Getulio Napeñas, on the basis of the President’s own “investigation,” and in the process preempted a police board of inquiry, the Justice Department, the Commission on Human Rights and Congress, all of which are still investigating the disastrous operation.
In the same address, the President accepted the resignation of his national police chief Alan Purisima without addressing reports that he actually ran the clandestine operation, despite being suspended over allegations of corruption.
Nor did the President say why he accepted Purisima’s resignation, a question that cries out for an answer, since he never even bothered to investigate the police chief, much less sack him, even after he was suspended by the Office of the Ombudsman last year.
The President also failed to say why the acting police chief and Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II—by their own admission—had been kept in the dark about the commando operation.
Instead, the President made a public spectacle of how it pained him to accept Purisima’s resignation, citing their long history together and thanking his former bodyguard for “the many years that he served the country before this tragedy happened.”
In a television interview after the speech, Purisima denied calling the shots in the botched operation, and said he merely provided “the intelligence package.” He also echoed the President’s assertion that it was the sacked SAF commander—and nobody else—that was responsible.
These assertions are hardly credible, coming from a public official who has lied before about the extent of his wealth and the means by which he accumulated it, and who has admitted in sworn testimony of accepting millions of pesos in discounts and donations from private individuals while he was police chief.
Two weeks after the Mamasapano bloodbath, Mr. Aquino would have us believe that a lone police commander was responsible for funding, planning and executing a secret operation to capture an international terrorist, eluding notice from all his superiors. The suggestion beggars belief and reeks of a cover-up.
Giving the public a scapegoat will not wash. It is time the President and his resigned police chief come clean.