Photo by www.pnp.gov.ph
Without firing a single shot, the Philippine National Police under the leadership of PNP Chief Avelino Razon (but for a dozen Howitzers fired by Task Force Comet of the Marines that hit a coastal village in Indanan, Sulu, except for that) , without losing any life and limb (except for the five injured civilians from the mortar fire), and with the help of the DILG headed by Ronaldo Puno, the invaluable assistance of Sulu local leaders, Senator Loren Legarda, and support from the Armed Forces, and under the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, the PNP brought home Ces Oreña-Drilon, Jimmy Encarnacion, Angelo Valderama, Octavio Dinampo. We thank them.
All those things this blog said about the Philippine National Police over the investigation of the disappearance of Jonas Burgos and other desaparecidos; the Nov. 29 detention of journalists who covered the Manila Penn incident; the RCBC alleged “rub-outs”, applied to those cases and don’t have to be taken back, but here, for bringing back the ABS-CBN news team and the prof, we thank them; good job; what’s the cliché? You can’t argue with success. Except for the bombings that displaced 200 families; i know that you call that “collateral damage”, and that DILG secretary Ronaldo Puno said that it was the shelling or the military presence that supposedly softened up or convinced the bandits to release their captives. “There was no ransom”. It was the military operation that brought the happy resolution. (But i thought the Marines were ordered to stand down when the negotiations were bearing fruit?). Okay. You can’t argue with success.
Of course one can argue: can it be called a success when the bandits continue to flourish with certainly no assurance that such crimes will not happen again as the perpetrators and their kind continue to hold camp in the hinterlands and barrios?
For one day, and for the lives that were saved today, we’ll call it and won’t argue.
What has escaped unnoticed up to now was: this was the debut, on the national stage, of the Philippine National Police as busters of the Abu Sayyaf and jungle bandits (if those were the real perpetrators). Of course, they haven’t busted the kidnapping band but the leads gathered are a good start. If memory serves right, for more than a decade and up until the kidnapping of Fr. Giancarlo Bossi, it was the Marines (and other AFP units) under those brigadier generals, that’ve tried to catch the Abu Sayyaf, rescue hostages and engage the kidnappers and bandits, at great, great cost: in terms of fatalities, beheadings, indiscriminate bombings, wars, military operations, refugees, resources, money hundreds of millions, escaped bandits laughing, aggravation, wasted time, etc. We suffered the AFP military generals for decades.
There are many questions unanswered. The PNP has investigators. The number of persons who, that Sunday, knew the exact hour of the day and the exact spot of the rough patch of road that Ces and her team took, can be narrowed down. In conflict areas, the chances of getting shot or getting kidnapped are, supposedly, higher; but when a plan had already been laid out for the ABS-CBN news team, they never had a chance the moment they stepped on the ground outside the hotel.
