PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte on Monday backpedaled on his plan to create an independent commission to determine the culpability of top Aquino administration officials for the botched January 2015 raid in which 44 police commandos were left to die in the marshlands of Mamasapano, Maguindanao.
Duterte had announced that plan back in January before relatives of the slain police commandos, two years after the ill-fated covert operation. He said he wanted to find out why the government of then-President Benigno Aquino III had left the commandos to die without any reinforcements or air and artillery support.
But in a speech this week, Mr. Duterte said he would now simply await the results of cases filed last year by relatives of the slain police commandos against Aquino before the Office of the Ombudsman, where he has been accused of reckless imprudence resulting in homicide.
Ironically, this is the same office that cleared Aquino of any criminal liability in the case two years ago, and the same Ombudsman who has been accused of favoring the former president.
In January, the Aquino-appointed Ombudsman, Conchita Carpio-Morales, promised to wrap up the investigation into the new cases “maybe this year, maybe next year.”
Going from strange to stranger, Duterte also said that Aquino’s sister, TV host Kris Aquino had texted him, pleading that he not put her brother in jail.
Using his speech instead of his phone to respond, Duterte assured Kris Aquino that he was not vindictive toward his political enemies, nor was he out to jail her brother.
“I just want to know the truth,” he said.
But if truth is what Mr. Duterte is after, he sure has a funny way of showing it. Rather than let an independent commission composed of “men of integrity and honor” determine the truth, he has left that job to an Ombudsman that, whether true or not, is perceived to be biased toward the former president who appointed her.
Of course, we do not know if Kris Aquino really texted the President, or if this is just another one of those presidential embellishments that the Palace says media must interpret with “creative imagination.”
If she did, however, her text clearly suggests that she knows what a vindictive man her own brother was, and how she now fears that he will finally reap the fruits of his own bitter harvest.
But none of this will answer the questions that we want answered about the Mamasapano debacle. Why did Aquino entrust the operation to his suspended police chief? Why were no reinforcements sent to prevent the slaughter of 44 police commandos? And now—why has President Duterte backpedaled on his Mamasapano promise?