THE PHILIPPINE Center for Investigative Journalism has always had a fixation with the issue of campaign finance – the relationships between political candidates and their donors or contributors, and how these relationships help define the behavior of politicians in office.
Campaign finance has unfortunately not always been a sexy peg for most mainstream news outfits. Elections have always been more of a horse race in this country, and more attention is often given by the local news on the bickering and fighting among candidates, as well as who won or lost in the polls.
The PCIJ is proud of the fact that in the last two elections, more and more stories in the mainstream news are being devoted to campaign finance issues. These issues include how much candidates spend in their campaigns, as well as the financial and political interests of those who contribute to their campaign kitties. In the last elections, the PCIJ held seminars on campaign finance, not just for national and local journalists, but even for employees and officials of the Commission on Elections.
Today’s Sulyap was produced by PCIJ Multimedia Producer Cong B. Corrales.
A FORMER CITY MAYOR and member of the ruling Liberal Party allegedly placed members of a vigilante-type death squad under the city’s payroll during his term in a brazen show of impunity and a reflection of “the abject failure of the central government,” according to a report released by an international human rights group on Wednesday.
In a press conference in Manila, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) presented its 71-page report entitled One Shot to the Head: Death Squad Killing in Tagum City, Philippines where it linked the former city mayor of Tagum and other local government and police officers in almost 300 murders in the city since 2007.
HRW said the Aquino administration must “take decisive action” in connection with the “death squad killings” in Tagum City that have already drawn the attention of provincial officials, the Commission on Human Rights, and even the Office of the Ombudsman. Tagum is a city in Davao del Norte province in Mindanao, not far from Davao City where HRW also earlier reported the existence of another vigilante-type group, the Davao Death Squad.
The HRW report offers details on the alleged involvement of former Tagum Mayor Rey Uy and other officials in the extrajudicial killings in the city. Uy, a member of the ruling Liberal Party, served as city mayor of Tagum for three terms until 2013. HRW says it has witnesses, including former death squad members, who said they personally received money from Uy as payment for some of the murders.
Most of the victims of these vigilante-type killings were supposedly alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children – whom Uy was reported to have branded as “weeds” that needed to be cleaned up, according to HRW’s witnesses. However, HRW said in its report that the members of the death squad also served as contract or hired killers.
Phelim Kine, deputy director for Asia of HRW said the report is based as well on official police records they obtained that showed some 298 killings between January 2007 and March 2013 which the provincial police office itself attributed to the “Tagum Death Squad.”
“(This report is borne) out of a two-year thorough research,” said Kine.
For the report, the HRW interviewed more than three dozen people. The subjects include surviving victims and their relatives, witnesses to the killings, police officers and four self-confessed former death squad members.
Interviews provided by Human Rights Watch. Identities of some have been hidden for security reasons.
Romnick Minta, one of four men who claimed to have acted as hitmen, made a videotaped confession to HRW. In his taped confession made available by HRW to the media, Minta made several controversial claims. These include the charge that several death squad members were integrated into the city’s Civil Security Unit, a security unit under the direct supervision and control of the Mayor’s office, and drew regular pay as city hall employees aside from additional pay of PhP 5,000 for every hit they made.
Minta added that they received orders for a hit through an aide of Mayor Uy. However, Minta said that the death squad members themselves would go to the Mayor’s residence to personally collect their payment for the hit from the Mayor himself.
Minta also told HRW that hit squad members who refused to carry out orders or tried to quit the squad were themselves likely to become subject to assassinations as well.
“They said they wanted to clean up Tagum, to bring change to Tagum, so that bad elements would think twice in coming in because they would end up dead in Tagum,” Minta said in the video.
“[The police] fully knew beforehand of the execution of such killing and that in every summary killing investigation they always appeared at the scene of the killing to see if we are positively identified by witnesses or not,” added Minta.
Minta is reportedly now under the protection of the provincial police office of Davao del Norte. Other than that, it is not clear what Minta’s status is, or if he has talked to any government prosecutors or anyone from the Department of Justice. It is also not clear if Minta is in any way considered a candidate for witness protection.
In a telephone interview with the PCIJ, Uy denied the accusations against him by HRW and claimed that mayors are always being blamed for the rise or fall of crimes in their towns or cities.
“Everytime someone is killed it is always being blamed on me, that’s the price you have to pay if you are a mayor, everything is being blamed on you,” he said.
When asked about the claims of the HRW witnesses that he was directly ordered the killings, Uy answered: “Did they present any written contract or any written order coming from me?”
Uy also blamed the current administration of Tagum Mayor Allan Rellon of trying to hide the killings and claimed that the murders continued after Uy’s term. One such killing was that of broadcast journalist Rogelio Butalid who was shot last December 2013 when Uy was no longer mayor of Tagum. Uy and Rellon are political rivals, as Rellon defeated Uy’s son De Carlo in the 2013 mayoralty elections.
The HRW report also attributed Butalid’s murder to the Tagum Death Squad. “The Tagum Death Squad also apparently carried out “guns-for-hire” operations that Uy was either unaware of or did not specifically commission, such as the killing of a journalist, a judge, at least two police officers, and a tribal leader as well as local politicians and businessmen. In several cases, the death squad’s handlers would fabricate drug allegations against the target of a contract killing to justify to Uy their murder,” the report said.
HRW also made available to the media a videotaped interview of a man it described as a police intelligence officer who has been investigating the Tagum Death Squad since May 2013. The officer, whose name and face were not revealed in the recording, said the activities of the death squad were common knowledge in the local police force.
“If the mayor gives his order, it gets implemented…. My colleagues would tell me, when I was new, to keep quiet. ‘These officers are the mayor’s men.’… So we just kept quiet. We couldn’t arrest them. We couldn’t do anything when they’re in front of us. But we knew what they were doing,” the intelligence officer said in the recording.
Kine said that the provincial police told HRW the 298 extrajudicial killings is only a “modest” estimate since the killings in Tagum City are under-reported.
“There is compelling evidence of the involvement of Tagum City police and former Mayor Rey Uy mayor in a death squad that operated during Uy’s 1998-2013 tenure as mayor,” Kine said.
Kine added: “We make no sweeping allegations but a laser-precision, well-documented and based on evidence we have filed in our report.”
Kine reiterated that they interviewed the subjects separately and on separate occasions and corroborated through cross-referencing the testimonies of the subjects of the report.
The HRW report claims that since 1998, when Uy was first elected as mayor, he along with close aides and city police officers, “hired, equipped, and paid for an operation that at its height consisted of 14 hit men and accomplices (assets).” All the alleged hit men were on the city government’s payroll with the Civil Security Unit (CSU). The CSU is a bureau of Tagum city hall tasked with traffic management and providing security in markets and schools.
“The Tagum death squad’s activities imposed a fear-enforced silence in Tagum City that allowed the killers and their bosses to literally get away with murder,” said Kine.
“This is a total system failure by the government at multiple levels. An abject failure of the central government. Without a single arrest, these killings are totally unacceptable,” he said.
Kine said that they gave copies of their report as well as an invitation to relevant government agencies 10 days before Wednesday’s press conference, but not one of the eight invitees attended.
Among those invited were: Tagum City former mayor Rey Uy and the incumbent mayor Allan Rellon; Solomon de Castilla, Tagum City police chief; Philippine National Police Chief Alan Purisima, Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima; Commission on Human Rights Chair Etta Rosales and Rodolfo Elman of the Office of the Ombudsman for Mindanao.
“The Aquino administration entered with a strong rhetoric on ending impunity,” said Kine. “There is a big gap between rhetoric and reality. It has failed to take decisive actions. The administration needs to recognize that death squads are real,” said Kine.
Human Rights Watch called on the Aquino administration to direct the responsible government agencies to take measures to stop the killings in Tagum City and elsewhere, thoroughly investigate death squad killings and the death squads themselves, and bring justice to the victims’ families. Immediate attention should be given to the situation in Tagum City and the role of former and current government officials and members of the police in abuses.
“President Aquino needs to send a loud and urgent message that deploying death squads as a ‘crime control’ measure is unlawful and needs to stop,” Kine said.
CUARESMA, or Holy Week is the time when Filipinos reflect on the agony of Jesus Christ. It is also the time when the mamumugon – the workers in the vast haciendasor plantations of Negros Occidental – slip into a suspended state between life and death, a seeming purgatory on earth.
This is Tiempo Muerto, the dead season in the Philippines’ sugar bowl, a period between the planting and harvesting of sugarcane. It lasts from April until August, and is a season that the sugar plantation workers dread more than the typhoons that enter the country also around this period.
Cuaresma, of course, ends with the celebration of Kristo conquering death, heaven imposing its desire on earth. But Tiempo Muerto may soon last more than the usual four months in Negros Occidental with the impending implementation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) in 2015 – if some sugar industry insiders and observers are proven correct.
Should that happen, the province and many of its sugar farmers who ignored the summons of the 1985 sugar crisis to reform, innovate, and be more competitive, would be largely to blame.
AFTA will bring the tariff on sugar imported from the 10 ASEAN member-countries down from 10 percent this year to five percent next year. ASEAN includes Thailand, the second largest exporter of sugar in the world after Brazil.
Yet what could be bitter pill for the sugar industry may actually turn into a sweet treat for most Filipinos who are all consumers of sugar and sugar-based food and other products. What may be Tiempo Muerto to Negros’ sugar producers could even spellTiempo Suerte to most Filipinos who are sugar consumers.
Tariff cuts, scholars say, may cause transitory pain for some sectors but the positive overall effect is to help the economy by lowering prices for consumers, and even cutting poverty incidence by 0.285 percentage points.
Mariveles is a senior journalist who has worked in both print broadcast media in Negros Occidental for over 15 years. He now joins PCIJ as one of its multimedia producers.
PERHAPS you know them well enough to elect them. But really, how well do you KNOW them?
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) has recently updated its MoneyPolitics Online site with more data on the candidates who won in the May 2013 midterm elections.
Under the site’s Public Profiles tab, a visitor may find the complete list of winners in the 2013 elections, from district and party-list Representatives in the 16th Congress, to Governors and Vice-Governors, Provincial Board Members, Mayors and Vice-Mayors, and Councilors.
More importantly, the sub-tabs bring up more information on the assets of many of these local officials: Their real and personal assets, their liabilities, and their net worth. These are grouped according to the year these information were filed.
A visitor however would notice that the data contained in the sub-tabs are uneven, or may at times be completely blank. Despite constitutional guarantees to access to information, and despite the requirement set by Republic Act 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees that public officials must publicly divulge their assets, few public officials really make these data available.
For example, many of the entries in the PCIJ database on the assets and liabilities of District and Party-List Representatives are based, not on the actual statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALNs), but on the summary asset reports made available by the House of Representatives. These summary asset reports are condensed and abridged reports of the assets of legislators, which give total figures but lack meaningful details.
The House of Representatives has refused to release SALNs of the 15th and 16th Congress to the PCIJ and other requesting parties, insisting that permission needs to be obtained first from the official involved.
So, how well do you really know the people you elect? Well, we wish we knew more about them too. And with the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online project, we would like everyone else to know all about them.
FOR TODAY’S Data A Day, we take a peek at the politics in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Since the ARMM was created by virtue of Republic Act 6734 in August 1989, a select number of families have dominated the local elections in Muslim Mindanao. Scholars say this is hardly surprising, given the traditional influence of Mindanao’s royal families over their communities that have historical been their constituencies.
However, with government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front preparing to sign a comprehensive agreement for peace that would pave the way for the creation of a BangsaMoro regional government, the ARMM as a political entity would soon be a thing of the past. The question that remains, however, is whether the families of old, the clans that have held sway, not just throughout the short history of the ARMM but through the centuries of the rule of the Datus, would still emerge as the dominant political figures in the BangsaMoro.
For today’s Data A Day, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s Research section used a word cloud generator to give us a quick and clearly visible answer to the question of which political families have dominated ARMM’s elections. The word cloud generator gives greater prominence, in terms of size, to words that appear more frequently in a document. For purposes of the word cloud below, the PCIJ used the list of official candidates in the last eight elections in the ARMM, as supplied by the Commission on Elections.
And as anyone can see below, one name stands out very prominently in the word cloud.
