MANILA, Philippines — On with the all-out war.

After a barrage of criticisms, Malacañang Thursday ruled out amnesty for the Abu Sayyaf and issued the go-signal for a fresh military offensive against the bandit group.

“I have been authorized by the executive secretary to advise you that there will be no amnesty granted to the Abu Sayyaf group,” deputy presidential spokesperson Anthony Golez said in a briefing.

This, Golez said, was consistent with the government’s position that “such leniency” should be extended only to individuals accused of political offenses, “not common criminals especially as brutal as the Abu Sayyaf.”

“These bandits are involved in kidnappings, bombings, beheadings, pillaging of villages, killing of innocent civilians, including women and civilians, rape, ambushes, looting and holdups, illegal taxation, sowing fear in investors,” he said.

When asked how the government should then deal with the bandit group, Golez said: “Just like how we are dealing with the Abu Sayyaf now and Thursday: all-out war against terrorist groups.”

Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. ordered an offensive against the kidnappers after Sunday’s release of Italian Eugenio Vagni, 62, the last of three volunteers of the International Committee of the Red Cross abducted in January to gain freedom.

Sen. Richard Gordon, chair of the Philippine National Red Cross, proposed granting amnesty to the elderly Abu Sayyaf commanders, drawing flak.

Certain conditions

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita had said this would be studied, but Secretary Jesus Dureza, presidential adviser on Mindanao, fiercely opposed it, along with Teodoro.

More than an hour before Golez’s announcement, Secretary Avelino Razon, presidential adviser on the peace process, said the amnesty proposal under certain conditions was still under “careful study.”

“They should manifest their desire to be given amnesty, turn over their firearms and surrender, and be responsible for the crimes committed before we even start talking amnesty,” Razon said in a phone interview.

Clamor for retribution

The guiding principle behind any amnesty, he stressed, should be justice for all parties.

Golez said the decision not to grant amnesty was arrived at “after giving due consideration to popular calls for justice and retribution, on one hand, and to the equally pressing imperatives of peace and development in Mindanao, on the other.”

“The decision also reflects our confidence that the peace process will not be affected by the denial of amnesty to a fringe gang of bandits and terrorists,” he added.

The peace process, Golez said, should proceed “on the basis of good faith discussions” between the government and mainstream political rebel groups under the UN principles of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration.

Golez dismissed speculations that the decision was influenced by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s July 30 meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House. The United States has branded the Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist group.

Military solution nixed

“It’s clear in our law that amnesty is only given to a specific population of people who are fighting for their political ideologies, and clearly the Abu Sayyaf does not belong to any of the criteria,” he said.

Golez said Ermita met with the Cabinet security cluster, which studied the proposal, before the announcement on the amnesty was made.

Maj. Gen. Ben Dolorfino, a Muslim convert who is set to take command of government forces in Southwestern Mindanao, said the Muslim problem called for “a paradigm shift in the way that we are conducting our internal security operations.”

Combat operations should be just 20 percent while the rest would be “civil-military operations” that would see military units getting more involved in efforts by local governments to improve the lives of the country’s Muslim minority.

Navy spokesperson Lt. Col. Edgard Arevalo said a “military solution alone may not bring about a lasting solution to the menace that (the) bandit Abu Sayyaf group brings.”

Arevalo said government agencies would have to work as a team to bring to the Abu Sayyaf and “those who may yet be convinced into joining them” some form of “hope that there is a future from modest but respectable means of livelihood.”

Better roads, health services and tap water supplies were needed along with a “paradigm shift that would give a premium to education that shall reorient values and the education of the young Muslims,” he added. With reports from Christine O. Avendaño and Agence France-Presse