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Rep. Teodoro L. Locsin Jr’s take on Martial Law in Maguindanao
Dec. 10, 2009Mr. Speaker, Mr. Senate President,This is how I sum up the government’s case.It is not without irony that I stand here defending martial law. But I dodefend it. Nowhere and at no other time has it been better justified nor  based more sufficiently on incontrovertible facts.Facts that call, indeed, cry out for the most extreme exercise of the police power, which is nothing less than martial law.Facts, not legal quibbles. Facts, not semantic distinctions of debatablevalidity. Look at the bodies, look at the arms stockpiles.Is rebellion as defined by the Penal Code a necessary condition for thevalidity of a proclamation of martial law? Then where is the definition of invasion in the Penal Code for the validity of martial law in that case?Since the repeal of the Anti-Subversion Act, ideology is not a componentof rebellion.I submit that rebellion here is not an exclusive reference to a particular  provision of a particular law; but to a wide yet unmistakable, general butnot indiscriminate allusion to a state of affairs that has deteriorated beyond lawless violence, beyond a state of emergency, to an obstinaterefusal to discharge properly the functions of civil government in thearea, by, of all people, the duly constituted but now obstructiveauthorities therein.It may be easier to repeat what Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography than to fix once and for all the meaning of the wordsrebellion and invasion, in a swiftly changing world, where both wordscan take on myriad realities. He said he couldn’t exactly define pornography but “I know it when I see it.”We are seeing Maguindanao and what we see, unless we are morally blind, cries out for martial law—at least for now.Here was an obstinate refusal to obey the law and the lawful commandsof the national government, so as to constitute, on the part of the onceduly constituted authorities, an illegal usurpation of the governmentoffices they once legally held; exercising them now, not for the purposesof law, nor with the aim of doing justice, but to use the powers and
 
functions of that same government to frustrate the law, to perpetuateinjustice, to protect the perpetrators of the most horrible crime inPhilippine history, and to preserve the political influence that inspired the perpetrators with the idea that they could commit such a crime with totalimpunity.This state of affairs calls for nothing less than martial law; however youquibble with words. It calls for martial law because just calling out thearmed forces was tried and proved wanting to quell lawless violence andrestore civil government. The proclamation of martial law, which wasaddressed as much at the armed forces as at Maguindanao, send the signalto all and sundry: henceforth soldiers are no longer to obey nor to fear the politicians they were once made to serve and pander to,in derogation of their professional integrity, in the name of a misguidedstrategy of mutual deterrence in the ongoing secessionist conflict. No, now the soldiers are beholden only to the law and the lawfulinstitutions like the Executive and Congress in Joint Session Assembled.Martial Law sends the needed signal to our soldiers and police that nowthey need no longer be respecters of special persons but only of theConstitution, the Bill of Rights, of the civil and criminal laws, of the Stateand not the temporary occupants of its public offices.Thus are soldiers and police emboldened to do their proper duty, to usetheir lawful force to the utmost lawful extent, as to achieve the specificaim of the proclamation; which, in this case, is to arrest with proper warrants anyone and everyone remotely connected to the massacre. Thereis no constitutional immunity from arrest, only from arrest withoutwarrant and detention without charge.And then proceed, as I hope they are doing, to destroy the politicalinfrastructure of one warlord family—though I hope not to favor the other one—and permanently dismantle their political influence in the province —though I hope not to establish the political influence of the other warlord clan. But that is only my hope. It is martial law that shocked andawed the elements of the Ampatuan army to surrender without a fight.This is the smallest atonement that the national government and theAmpatuans can make for the worst crime in Philippine history—thenational government for arming them and the Ampatuans for using thosearms so hideously.It is asked: If there is martial law to round up the Ampatuans, why not
 
extend the martial law to contain the MILF and even go after the drugtrade? Willoughby suggests that a proclamation of martial law shouldhave a specific aim and should not wander from that aim, that that aim being achieved, the mission should be declared accomplished, and martiallaw lifted in the area. Anyway, it can be re-imposed again, and again, andagain, and again—as it can be reviewed by the Congress in Joint Sessionas frequently.To this day, martial law in Maguindanao has not, despite the martialenergy it has imparted to the military and police, occasioned a singleabuse. True, soldiers kicked down the door to Governor Ampatuan’shospital room.That is not an offense in law.
 Lese majeste
is not a crime in a democracy.That is not even an offense against the door, because a door has no legalstanding to complain of being kicked even before the Supreme Court.Remember, soldiers kicked the door and not the governor.And it was a hospital door. The hospital can seek damages, if it dares,after harboring a fugitive.Our soldiers have not violated a single fundamental right, not even of the perpetrators of this hideous crime. Far from it, our soldiers have securedthe fundamental rights of the ordinary people of Maguindanao from thedepredations of the Ampatuan family and its goons, whether in their lingering terror of this family they admit it or not. This is known as theStockholm Syndrome.So here, by whatever name you choose to call it, is a situation comprisingan obstinate, querulous, snarling, vicious, refusal to obey the laws and thelawful orders of the government, on the part of a now renegadegovernment and escalating from stubborn resistance to threatening posture, so as to constitute in the mind of the Executive a threat so certainthat its actuality could only be established beyond cavil by the senselesssacrifice of soldiers to prove the threat real and not just looming or imminent.This state of affairs includes what the Penal Code calls sedition and a hostof other felonies and offenses; but which, regardless of which definitionyou prefer, constitutes for any reasonable person a state of conflict.What Willoughby said, referring to martial law enforcers, ironicallyapplies not to our soldiers but to their targets, the Ampatuans and their henchmen. “No man in this country is so high that he is above the law” asthe Ampatuans believed. “No officer of the law may set that law at
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