Keep calm, Roxas tells Mindanao folk

Interior Secretary Mar Roxas: Keep calm. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–Keep calm and be alert.

Interior Secretary Mar Roxas on Monday gave this piece of advice to Davao City residents amid reports of a terrorist threat to the city and other parts of Southern Mindanao.

Speaking at a news briefing in Camp Crame in Quezon City, Roxas said President Aquino had ordered closer coordination among the intelligence units of the Philippine National Police, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency and other law-enforcement agencies.

Although law-enforcement authorities were working on “leads” they had gathered about reported plans to bomb parts of Southern Mindanao, Roxas said they were not naming any group behind the alleged threat so as not to jeopardize ongoing security operations.

The interior secretary also urged the people to immediately report to authorities any suspicious strangers or packages in their communities.

Roxas flew to Davao on Sunday to meet with Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and discuss preparations being put in place by the city government and local state security forces to thwart possible terror attacks.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, this threat is only about 3,” the tough-talking Duterte told reporters after meeting with Roxas.

“Our response is the same (as if the threat) were a 10 because that is our job,” the mayor added.

Roxas said, “Even if the threat is Level 3 or 4, the important thing is (that) our response should be (for a) Level 10, because we cannot just ignore this threat of bombing and terrorism.”

Chief Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac, PNP spokesman, said that a “domestic terror group” was behind the threat in Davao.

He added that though there was no indication of a similar threat in Metro Manila, the PNP National Capital Region office had intensified its checkpoint operations in the metropolis.

“The PNP is doing proactive and preemptive security operations. The public has nothing to worry about,” Sindac said in a separate news briefing.

Roxas, who said he went to Davao City “to ensure that everything that must be prepared is prepared,” told reporters he was satisfied with the reports of the local PNP and the mayor.

Davao City has a 1,400-strong police force, while the antiterror unit Task Force Davao has about 350 specially trained soldiers. The Public Safety Command Center operates 200 CCTV cameras.

“It is the duty of the national government to support the local government. For example, one of the things that we discussed was the need for more canine assets,” Roxas said.

Regardless of the speculations behind the reported threat, the interior secretary said the national government believed that (the situation) must be addressed seriously.

“We are not being alarmist,” Roxas said.

Duterte said the local government was confident about the peace and order situation in Davao, but the city was not letting its guard down.

“We are doing everything humanly possible,” Duterte said, adding that he was more concerned about criminality.

“Drugs and human trafficking—those are where I am focused,” he said.

In a Facebook post, former Presidential Assistant for the Peace Process Jesus Dureza described the threat as a “big hoopla… that smells like a rotten, stale fish (more than “fishy”) to me.”

“First, the big news about no less than the President himself making that now-famous phone call to Mayor Duterte. Then sending to Davao City no less than the highest police official, Mar Roxas, to preside over a highly publicized briefing. I had learned from my long experience in Mindanao that real (or unreal) security threats were not handled this way. (They were) discreetly done in whispers and behind closed doors in security briefings. I don’t know why the shift in tactics,”Dureza said.–With a report from Karlos Manlupig, Inquirer Mindanao