Logic from hell

Theres The Rub
by Conrado de Quiros
from Philippine Daily Inquirer

You are the chief of police of a small town, and a woman reports a problem to you. She lives in a street that is being terrorized by a thug. The thug has been known to hold up people, particularly at night, rape women, and kill anyone who crosses his path. The whole street is in deathly fear of him. It’s gotten so the woman is scared to go to work as a waitress in an all-night diner. She asks what can be done about it.

Easy, you say. If he accosts you and tries to rape you, just give in. Do not put up a fight. Better raped than dead, or beaten to near-death and raped anyway. Better still, don’t go out of the house na lang so you can be safe.

That was pretty much what Gabriel Claudio, Gilbert Teodoro and Prospero Pichay told Toto Mangudadatu when he complained about the Ampatuans. And that was pretty much all they could have said, and done, according to Gary Olivar.

As Mangudadatu tells it, long before the Maguindanao massacre, he was dissuaded by Claudio, Teodoro and Pichay from running. He quoted Teodoro, the defense chief, in particular as saying: “I love you very much, Toto. These people are violent. Please do not run.”

“In terms of fair warning and due notice,” Olivar now says, “it seems that we were not negligent. At the end of the day, it was the decision of the candidate if he would proceed with his candidacy based on the information he had received. I’m not sure what else ought to have been done.”

This parallels our example in nearly every respect. The core of it is that it grants the unacceptable, the outrageous, and the obscene, and merely proposes ways of coping with it, or getting around it, or enduring it. Specifically, it grants that cutthroats have every right to exist, or indeed exist as rulers of their turf, and merely proposes ways by which people may avoid being killed by them. When the plain and commonsensical thing is to see them as the problem, and do something about them.

Claudio, Teodoro and Pichay knew the Ampatuans were “violent people.” Malacañang knew the Ampatuans were “violent people.” All of Mindanao knew the Ampatuans were “violent people.” What else ought to have been done?

Let me count the ways.

One, government could have disarmed the Ampatuans. You knew they are “violent people,” what were you doing allowing them to carry state-of-the-art weapons? Why were you allowing them to maintain a private army? In fact what the hell were you doing supplying them with weapons? Surely Teodoro, as the defense chief knew the institution he headed was one of the prime sources of the Ampatuans’ arsenal? If he did not, what was he doing being defense secretary?

If the Ampatuans had been disarmed—as well indeed as the Mangudadatus; they cannot escape the charge of being political warlords too—then the massacre would not have happened. These “violent people” would have been reduced to throwing stones at their enemies instead of smiting them, or engaging their enemies in fist fights instead of gunning them down while they pleaded for their lives. Although bullies being cowards at heart, they probably would have balked at the stoning and fighting with fists as their enemies would have been perfectly capable of fighting back. The women included.

Two, government could have arrested the Ampatuans. The proposition that you may not arrest people before they commit a crime of course is true, but if you are warning Mangudadatu not to run because you fear he or his supporters might be harmed, then you are saying that you believe the Ampatuans to be wreakers of harm. You will not be saying that unless you believe they have done it before, and can do it again.

The government could have arrested the Ampatuans for past crimes. Or filed any number of cases against them to deter them. That would not have been hard, given that their mayhem is an open secret in Maguindanao, and the kin of the dead are still crying for justice. It is not a question of way, it is a question of will. Where there’s a will, there’s a sight. Nowhere more so than here.

Third, the government could have sent soldiers to accompany Mangudadatu’s supporters to the capitol. The argument that the government cannot possibly do that to every opposition figure in the countryside because it has limited resources does not apply here. That is so because it was the government itself, or its officials, that saw the threat. Indeed, not just saw the threat but alerted the candidate, or would-be candidate, to the threat. You know the Ampatuans are “violent people,” you know they react to people who stand in their way violently, you know Mangudadatu is standing in their way, you know that the Ampatuans are going to react violently to him, in fact you warn Mangudadatu of the violence about to come his way—and you leave his supporters to the protection only of women and journalists?

And imply afterward, “It’s your fault you ran?”

That’s like telling the woman in our example after she is raped, “It’s your fault, you went to work.”

That logic from hell hasn’t just made the Ampatuans possible, it has made this entire regime possible. Ironically, it has been couched in that seemingly benign idea, “think positive.” The logic grants that Arroyo lies (she said she would not run, but did), cheats (she did not win by God, she won by Garci), steals (she hasn’t just stolen money, she has stolen hope), and merely exhorts the people to find ways to deal with it, to get around it, to endure it. That is to think positive. To complain about it, or protest it, or defy it, is to think negative. When bad things happen to those who do, such as Jun Lozada, they are told: “Ikaw kasi, alam mo nang ganyan yan, lumaban ka pa (You know she’s like that, you still went up against her).”

“It’s your fault you want to be a good citizen.”