The bloods of the murdered civilians will haunt them from now on. Justice will be served one day, and let’s hope it would be soon

Law is the fabric that holds society together. Society cannot function properly, and in fact there is no reason for it to exist in the first place, if its inhabitants are not government by a set of laws. Remove the law from the lives of people and what you have is total chaos, anarchy, mayhem.

That’s why we have a universally accepted saying that no one is above the law. The law should reign supreme over all its subjects. It also means that no matter who the person is and what his status in society is, he cannot claim superiority over law.

The moment some people hallucinate thinking they are above the law - thus they can do whatever they wish to do – it is expected that trouble, disorder, conflict will ensue.

But what made some individuals think they are above the law? That they are untouchables? That no authorities can overpower their own authority? There are many answers to these questions. In the case of the Ampatuans in Maguindanao, this powerful political clan there, as what has been reported, began to assume they are greater than law when the highest leader in the country became enormously indebted to them during the two major elections.

In 2004 and 2007 elections, the administration had benefited from the landslide votes in the ARMM Region. So surprising was the result of the election it left no iota of doubt that fraud must have taken place in the polls. How could one believe that the then presidential candidate, the late Fernando Poe Jr., got zero votes in many towns in ARMM? Sen. Panfilo Lacson, an arch enemy of the administration, also got a zero vote. The administration senatorial ticket received a 12-0 victory there in 2007. It is no wonder many of the subsequent election protests were centered on recounting of ballots coming from the ARMM Region.

It is easy to perpetuate electoral fraud in a region where people are living in fear, where democracy is almost non-existent, where there is only one family who rules the area with an iron fist. Such as the Ampatuans who always get whatever they want.

Despite the overwhelming evidences and statements of witnesses, Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo eschewed mentioning the Ampatuans as the prime suspect in last Monday’s Maguindanao massacre that left 57 people dead, including lawyers and journalists. The press branded Gloria’s treatment of the issue as that of using a kid glove.

Her declaring of Maguindanao in a state of emergency and calling on the Filipino people for a national day of mourning are just saving-face. Within 24 hours after the Maguindanao massacre, she could have done a more purposeful and dramatic solution to the violence. Gloria was clearly avoiding she won’t make the Ampatuans mad at her.

Here we see how we’ve been wrong, as a nation, for having a kind of leadership that does not protect the interest of the people, a politics that does not preserve the sanctity and supremacy of law.

The fact that the Ampatuans reportedly mobilized government-paid police officers and soldiers to pave way for the massacre of their political enemies is an indication of their assumption they are above the law. Killing innocent civilians, with that kind of daylight boldness and temerity, confirmed the suspects’ collapse of respect for law.

Planning and executing such kind of unprecedented mass carnage in the history of the Philippines cannot just happen out of a whim. It was done with the false belief the perpetrators are above the law. But they are wrong. The bloods of the murdered civilians will haunt them from now on. Justice will be served one day, and let’s hope it would be soon.