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If the Philippines is to
reach First World economic status, which is a major goal of the
Arroyo presidency, the extrajudicial killings must cease. The
President has no choice but take major steps to act on the Melo
Commission’s recommendation for the creation of a civilian
investigative agency “independent of and not under the command,
control, or influence of the Armed Forces.”
Only
such an independent body, with an adequate budget no higher
authority can rescind, can ever go to the bottom of these murders
and work with some hope of success.
Its
goal must of course be made clear: To find out the truth, determine
probable guilt and culpability and prosecute the culpable or pass
the information on for prosecution to the lawfully designated organs
of the criminal justice system. Military perpetrators will be
prosecuted by the Deputy Ombudsman for the Military.
The
independent probe body will also have to work just as hard to find
out the truth about those murders committed by the communists.
Because of this, no matter how independent the investigative agency
is, its members will have to be extraordinarily heroic because they
will function in the shadow of rogue killers in the AFP as well as
the terrorists of the CPP-NPA.
The
independent probe agency’s members could, God forbid, become
additional names on the list of extrajudicial-killing victims.
It
will not be easy to put together a large enough team of qualified
Filipinos with a staff of civilian agents well trained in law
enforcement and investigative work. These will have to be supported
by experts in the use of sophisticated equipment.
Funding
will be relatively easy to raise, if Malacañang will zealously
support this project. The President’s office could divert some of
its and the major cabinet department’s so-called intelligence
funds to the new body. On the day Mrs. Arroyo decided to make the
Melo Report public, she announced that she would make P25 million
available to the Commission on Human Rights so it could more
effectively investigate the killings. She can take moves like that
in support of the proposed new investigative agency.
If
necessary an emergency request to the World Bank, the ADB and
wealthy governments of states very close to the Philippines—like
the United States and Japan—will most likely quickly yield
donations of at least the equivalent of US$2 million or more than
P96 million pesos. This amount, surely, would be more than enough to
finance a good part of the agency’s work for a year especially if
most of the agency’s operatives are men and women known for
integrity and courage seconded from the NBI, the PNP and other
government units with skilled investigators.
A
new law needed
There
are ways to invest the new body with the power to issue search,
seizure and arrest warrants by making it a special branch of an
existing institution with those powers.
Congress
needs to pass a law. The President should again call for a special
session to tackle this law as well as the one to make the cost of
medicines cheaper through generics and two or three others that are
very urgent and necessary but did not make it last Tuesday.
This
is an extremely grave matter. It has an economic dimension related
to the country’s peace and order situation about which foreign
investors and embassies have appealed to the government for action.
As long as extrajudicial killings and murders of crusading judges
and journalists are commonplace, there will always be dark clouds
over the President’s brilliant fiscal and economic achievements.
The
President will win kudos from the Filipino people—and the rest of
the world—for taking radically unusual steps to create this
investigative body.
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