This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 49, January 22-28, 2006
NEWS ANALYSIS
Officers’ Jailbreaks
Show Deep Division in AFP
What now looks like an emerging series of
escapes from jail by leaders of the Magdalo group, which tried to stage an armed
uprising at the Oakwood Hotel in Makati City on July 27, 2003, is not just a
matter of lapses in security. More than that, it shows a deep division within
the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). This does not bode well for a regime
that is hard-put to defend itself from numerous challenges to its rule.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
On Jan. 17, Army Captain Nathaniel Rabonza and
First Lieutenants Sonny Sarmiento, Lawrence San Juan, Patricio Bumindang escaped
from their detention cells in Fort Bonifacio, Makati City.
They were not the first to escape. Marine
Captain Nicanor Faeldon slipped away on Dec. 14 from his military guard after a
hearing on the mutiny case filed against Magdalo leaders. He has since started
his own website and issued several statements
calling for civil disobedience against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Their escapes are made interesting, to say the
least, by the circumstances that attended their jailbreak and – in Faeldon’s
case – the events that have transpired following his feat.
Army chief Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon tried to
explain the Jan. 17 escape by saying that the jail guards were distracted when
Atty. Roel Pulido, a counsel for the Magdalo group, was negotiating against his
clients' transfer to another detention center. The official AFP line thus far is
that the four officers slipped out of their cell while their guards were
preoccupied. The four were said to have scaled the high wall of Fort Bonifacio
using chairs placed on top of each other as an improvised ladder.
TV footage of the route the four supposedly took
show a Fort Bonifacio wall heavily laden with barbed wire on top. It would have
been next to impossible for them to have slipped out so easily just by scaling
it. On the road at the other side of the wall are a series of checkpoints where
the escapees could have been quickly stopped and hauled back to prison.
It is also quite impossible for any jail guard
to be distracted long enough to allow four detainees to bolt out of their cell.
Besides, where could they have taken the chairs
from?
In Faeldon’s case, his website contains several
photographs of him visiting military and police detachments after his escape.
His visits included no less than Camp Crame in Quezon City which is the national
headquarters of the Philippine National Police (PNP). Before that, he had posted
on his website pictures of himself visiting the AFP’s Western Command
headquarters in Palawan (an island province south of Manila) and Southern
Command (Southcom) headquarters in Zamboanga (Mindanao, southern Philippines).
Faeldon remains at large in spite of moving
freely about. This, even as a nationwide manhunt was earlier ordered and he
should be easy to recognize given that his pictures have been on the front page
of newspapers since his escape. His posting of photographs of his visits to
military and police detachments is causing great embarrassment to the AFP and
the PNP.
The Jan. 17 escapees have confirmed widespread
suspicions that they got help from the inside. They admitted in a recent
statement that their fellow soldiers let them get away. Meanwhile, the fact that
Faeldon has been able to freely roam around though he is now in the order of
battle shows that in the lower ranks of both the military and the police, there
is little interest in going after him.
The extent of active support for the Magdalo
group, from the ranks of both the AFP and the PNP, is not yet known. But there
is certainly widespread sympathy for them from their fellow soldiers and even
from the police rank and file.
Things were bound to come to this for Macapagal-Arroyo.
In 2001, Navy Rear Admiral Guillermo Wong tried
to expose anomalies in the procurement of equipment in his service branch. He
was rewarded by being placed on floating status, and his case was never heard.
The Magdalo group declared that they resorted to
the Oakwood uprising as a way of exposing their sad experiences with corruption
in the military – after failing with more peaceful means. The persons they
directed their protests against have not been punished but have even been
promoted.
Military analysts say that there are many in the
armed forces and even in the police who may not have been behind Wong and the
Magdalo group but who had grievances they wanted to be brought out into the
open. The non-resolution of the issues raised by Wong and the Magdalo group –
which called attentions running in the AFP and the PNP long before Macapagal-Arroyo
came to power – resulted in unresolved grievances piling up.
The broad opposition to the Macapagal-Arroyo
regime due to questions on its legitimacy, alleged corruption and human rights
violations, and imposition of what are considered “anti-national and
anti-people” policies is increasing demoralization among those called upon to
defend the government. Day by day, they are learning to ask why they are under
orders to risk life and limb to protect a government that has earned the ire of
the public and is getting more and more isolated.
Incoming Presidential Chief of Staff Michael
Defensor warned that the Arroyo administration will fight “fire with fire” if
rebel soldiers attempt a coup. But in the event that the administration
mobilizes soldiers against a coup, how can it be sure where the soldiers’ guns
will be pointing at? Bulatlat © 2006 Bulatlat
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