The Arroyo government administers all the key agencies and resources that could prevent these heinous crimes and real acts of terror from being committed as well as in bringing the perpetrators to justice. First off, there is the National Security Council (NSC) and National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), followed by the various intelligence arms of the AFP and PNP, whose spy agencies, operatives, moles, and assets operate from the national to the barangay levels in 80 provinces. Then there are prosecuting agencies under the Department of Justice (DoJ) as well as the constitutionally-mandated Ombudsman. If it wills, the government can press charges up to the various courts and see to it that justice is served: for the victims of crimes given justice, and the perpetrators penalized. To perform their tasks efficiently, the government allocates billions for their budget in addition to military aid and intelligence and psywar training provided by the United States.

Instead of providing security to the people, however, government’s security and investigative agencies are being put to task for being major violators of human rights, based on reports of the Commission on Human Rights and other institutions. As evidenced by the political and media killings, the series of forced disappearances, and other cases of human rights violations, the state’s security apparatuses have either been complicit to these crimes or negligent of their tasks in seeing to it that the rights of citizens, including the most outspoken critics using the legal arena, are respected under the Constitution and international law. Investigations are sham and the probers only serve to whitewash these investigations.

For those following up these cases, leads, and trends, the state’s security apparatuses and many pro-Arroyo generals and police directors heading them only serve to protect the powers-that-be never mind if this results in the infringement of the civil and political rights of people most especially critics, social advocates, and political dissenters. The broad repercussions of all these are a state of destabilization and a climate of fear among the people.

Systematic terror

Most dangerous, however, is when the security apparatuses are used systematically to sow fear and terror among the people. The more recent examples of this are the fascist rule under the Marcos dictatorship, the total war policy unleashed by the succeeding regimes, and now, Arroyo’s Oplan Bantay Laya I and II, which is a blueprint of the Cabinet Oversight Committee for Internal Security’s National Internal Security Policy (NISP), headed by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita.

Hidden in these security strategies, however, are the state’s dirty work programs that use death squads, triggermen, and other special operatives who include ex-convicts with a carte blanche to conduct special psychological warfare projects such as the ones that have led to the summary executions and forcible abduction of many activists and outspoken critics. The allegations of the Oakwood mutiny rebel officers of clandestine mission orders to bomb civilian targets in Mindanao are instructive of these operations, as were the bombings, arsons, and fake assassination attempts that Marcos’s special operatives conducted to justify the imposition of martial law in the early 1970s.

These are the reasons why the Arroyo government has enjoyed no shred of credibility, either in the territory of human security or in investigation and prosecution. Pulse Asia’s recent opinion survey shows Arroyo given a distrust rating of 46 percent and a disapproval rating of 39 percent. Doubts are high that no corruption case will be solved if the government itself is involved, and no heinous crime or acts of state terror can bring out the real culprit either if its own security forces are suspected to be responsible in past and present incidents.

The call for impartial investigation of the House bombing is therefore in order and deserves the support of everybody. Questions remain, however, whether such citizens’ fact-finding body should be empowered to investigate and bring to court the brains behind the carnage. Posted by (Bulatlat.com)

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