SENATORS called out authorities in Misamis Occidental for letting a team from the provincial government take the lead in the June 16 operation to boot out suspended Bonifacio Mayor Samson Dumanjug from the town hall.
Senator Ronald Dela Rosa said the police, and not members of Misamis Occidental’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, should have taken the lead in enforcing the provincial capitol’s preventive suspension order against Dumanjug.
“Kung kayo (police) ang nag-lead sa operation (If you had led the operation), it could have been peaceful,” Dela Rosa, a former chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), told police officials on Wednesday, August 2.
During the second and final day of the hearing of the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs about the alleged inhumane, violent, and highly irregular acts perpetrated against Dumanjug, senators questioned the lead role of the capitol’s disaster risk reduction and management officials and workers during the Bonifacio town hall raid.
Senators said it was an “overstretched” implementation of the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Act, specifically on the activation of the Incident Command System (ICS).
It was Misamis Occidental Governor Henry Oaminal who activated the province’s ICS to physically remove Dumanjug who was holed up in the town hall for more than two weeks.
Oaminal claimed that he activated the ICS to implement the preventive suspension order, which Dumanjug questioned and defied.
He said his request to the police was only to “suppress disorder” in serving the preventive suspension order which was greenlit by the provincial board.
But Dela Rosa and other senators saw the way the operation was carried out to be an "overkill."
Apart from the ICS personnel who hid their identities by wearing hats and masks and at least 20 police officers, the Army deployed more than 24 soldiers and a Simba armored carrier to the Bonifacio town hall.
“Tako ba kayo? (Were you afraid?) This is overkill,” Senator Jinggoy Estrada said during the committee hearing.
Senator Aquilino Martin Pimentel III said he could not understand the “overstretched application” of the disaster law during the raid.
“The interpretation is problematic. In your desperation, disaster law ang ginamit (you misused the disaster law),” Pimentel said.
During the hearing, Misamis Occidental officials presented video clips to the committee in an attempt to refute allegations that irregularities marred the June 16 operation and that Dumanjug’s rights were violated.
The video clips showed that Dumanjug’s police escort was not told to lie on his belly; that malong (native clothing) was not wrapped around Dumanjug’s head; and that nurses were outside an ambulance when the mayor alleged one of them tried to inject him with an unknown substance.
Dela Rosa was visibly irked when he asked the ICS representatives to identify the people in one video clip.
“You claimed you had a briefing before the operation. Now, you’re telling me you don’t know who is standing beside who in the video,” Dela Rosa said.
Pimentel, for his part, said the video presentation appeared spliced to him to show only what the ICS wanted the committee members to see.
“If there was a warning before the glass door was shattered, why did the clip not show that?” Pimentel asked the ICS team.
Dela Rosa ordered the police who accompanied the ICS team to submit the raw and unedited video of the incident to the committee.
Senators also noted that it was the first time that the ICS was activated in Misamis Occidental and that the group was not mobilized during the widespread flooding in the province in December 2022.
“The operation was about the defiance of a politician to a decision by a political body. You can say it was some sort of a man-made disaster, pero pilit na pilit (This is pushing it a bit too far),” Pimentel said.
Dela Rosa, the committee’s chairman, recommended the following:
- 1. Review of police protocols in conducting arrests
- 2. Guidelines from the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) for the proper and peaceful implementation of local government orders.
- 3. Training for local government officials and personnel about how to discharge quasi-judicial functions.
- 4. Revisit the implementing rules and regulations of the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Act.
During the first day of the hearing on Tuesday, August 1, senators criticized the police and military for the operation to remove Dumanjug from the Bonifacio town hall.
The preventive suspension order came as an offshoot of alleged irregularities in the purchase of heavy equipment by the Bonifacio town government, which Dumanjug denied, and the mayor’s defiance of a previous suspension order.
Dumanjug and his group accused the provincial government, police, and military of conspiring against them, alleging numerous violations and irregularities during the raid.
Senators questioned the involvement of Army soldiers in a law enforcement operation and expressed concern over the treatment of the 70-year-old mayor during the June 16 raid. (This article was first published at rappler.com)
