Stop managing news, Palace ally tells Aquino
An outspoken ally of the administration is urging President Benigno Aquino III to stop managing the news and lay down his accountability and that of the United States in the Special Action Force (SAF) mission in which 44 police commandos and 18 Moro rebels died.
Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello said the President’s meeting with 25 House leaders on Monday was a “thinly orchestrated effort on the part of the Palace to manage the flow of information about Mamasapano” aimed at making resigned Philippine National Police Director General Alan Purisima the “fall guy” in the Jan. 25 operation in Maguindanao province.
The President told the House leaders led by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. that he was lied to by Purisima, who was feeding him information on the mission to arrest Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias “Marwan,” and his deputy, Basit Usman.
Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Purisima was then more than a month into his six-month suspension imposed by the Ombudsman on corruption charges.
“The President is again attempting to avoid responsibility for the raid and its bloody consequences by foisting the blame on Purisima. I do not mean to imply that Purisima is guiltless. Indeed, had the President not put Purisima in charge of the operation, blatantly defying the Ombudsman’s suspension order, this tragic fiasco might never have happened. Responsibility was shared, and it’s the President’s attempt not to own up to his share that infuriates me,” Bello said.
Bello, who was not among the lawmakers in the select group, said the President should have emulated US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter who took full responsibility for military fiascos under their watch—Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba for Kennedy and the Desert One rescue operation in Iran for Carter.
“Why can’t this President be presidential enough to do the same and suffer the consequences, as Kennedy and Carter did? He really has to do something drastic with his style of governance,” Bello said.
He said the House leaders should be careful lest they be accused of “acquiescing” to Malacañang’s news management.
With the public’s unslaked thirst for truth, Bello said the House should proceed with its suspended hearings on the SAF mission so as not to appear it was conniving with Malacañang on the perceived cover-up.
Bello criticized Senate President Franklin Drilon’s haste in shutting the door on the Mamasapano probe even if the roles of the President and the United States had not yet been clarified.
“Whenever the role of the US came up in the Senate and House hearings, the witnesses either invoked national security or said they would answer in an executive session. It is amazing that for the most part, the senators acquiesced. Full public disclosure of the US role in the botched raid is in the national interest. Democracy suffers if more and more things are hidden behind a veil of ‘national security,’” Bello said.
He complimented the Inquirer for coming up with three facts about the Mamasapano mission:
US drones pinpointed Marwan’s hiding place, guided the Filipino commandos to it, and provided real-time management by the SAF command away from the battlefield.
American advisers were the ones who vetoed informing top officials of the PNP, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front of the planned raid on the grounds that news of the action would be leaked to Marwan.
The Americans vetoed the Philippine government’s plan of a fused team of the Seaborne Unit and the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) and instead use the US Navy Seals-trained Seaborne to seize the Malaysian terrorist with the QRF limited to extraction duty.
“The full dimensions of the Americans’ involvement remain to be unearthed but it is now clear to me that taking out Marwan was a US, not a Philippine, priority, though, of course, Filipino officials had been concerned with the Malaysian’s bomb-making activities,” Bello said.
Marwan carried a $6-million bounty on his head put up by the FBI.
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