Gloria Arroyo in debt to Ampatuan clan?

Gloria Arroyo was accused by a lawyer of the Ampatuan clan that she has abandoned them after the massacre on November 23 last year where 57 people got brutally killed. Press secretary Cerge Remonde said at a press conference “It’s a good thing that they’re being dropped like a hot potato and that a neutron bomb wasn’t dropped on them after what some members of the family have been accused of doing”.

Ampatuan clan members have been arrested and charged in connection with the massacre in Datu Shariff Aguak town where 57 journalists and relatives of a rival candidate got ambushed and  killed in the country’s worst election-related violence. Amaptuans lawyer, Philip Pantojan, said yesterday that GMA dropped the Ampatuans “like a hot potato” and that she even backed the filing of charges against them in an attempt to save face.

The Ampatuans delivered crucial votes for Gloria Arroyo that ensured her victory in the 2004 presidential elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, with rival Fernando Poe Jr., an immensely popular actor in the region, failing to get a single vote in Manguindanao. Remonde also said that the government’s action to hold the Ampatuans accountable for the massacre far outweighed whatever political debt Arroyo owed them. “Responsibility over a crime as heinous as the Maguindanao massacre cannot be bound by any utang na loob (debt of gratitude),” he said.

Prospero Pichay, presidential political adviser, agreed and said that the Ampatuans should not take their prosecution against Arroyo. “No one is above the law. The President is letting the wheels of justice turn. Even if she is the brother of the President and he violates the law, I’m sure the President will let the wheels of justice turn,” he said. “How many of our colleagues in the media died? Debt of gratitude is out of the question here.” “We still assure them of due process; due process is being conducted. But if their lawyers expect that they can get away with it just because they supported the President in the last elections, then they must be dreaming, but their dream will be the country’s nightmare,” he said.

It was not so smart for the Ampatuans to believe that their support for the President could protect them now from the prosecution for a crime, Remonde said. “We support a President because we believe in the President’s programs. But it’s wrong to assume that this same President will tolerate any wrongdoing. What kind of a President is that?” he said.

Could they live with the fact the Ampatuans delivered the votes for Ms Arroyo? “Yes, we can live with the fact especially because the larger part is that it’s not only the vote of the Ampatuans in Maguindanao that made the President win. If we speak of any group voting, I claim that it is the Cebuano vote that really made her win. You cannot cheat in a place like Cebu,” he said.