MANILA – The European Union (EU) has urged the Arroyo administration to take all the necessary steps to minimize violence and help ensure clean, free and credible elections scheduled in May.
Ambassador Alistair McDonald, the EU delegation head in the Philippines, disclosed that the EU Parliament approved last week a resolution condemning the massacre of 57 people in Maguindanao on November 23.
McDonald said the resolution also strongly urged the government to prosecute and convict all those involved because the massacre has a bearing on the conduct of the coming May 10 elections.
“I fear that elections in 2010 might follow the normal pattern of local political violence,†McDonald stressed. “We urge the government to take proper steps to ensure that the elections would be peaceful.â€
Police have blamed members of a powerful and influential clan, headed by their patriarch former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan, for the massacre, described as the worst election-related violence in the country’s history.
Among those killed were the wife and two sisters of the scion of a rival clan who wants to run for governor of Maguindanao as well as 30 Mindanao-based journalists.
The victims were in a five-vehicle convoy on their way to file a certificate of candidacy for governor before the Commission on Elections in the capital of Shariff Aguak when they were killed.
However, McDonald also expressed the hope that the coming May polls would be more peaceful and serve as a model for future electoral exercises in the country.
This developed as two independent consultants of the United Nations said the Maguindanao massacre must be seen as a watershed moment to bring the perpetrators to justice and take measures to prevent such crimes in the future.
The call was made by Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and Frank La Rue, the special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression.
Alston and La Rue pointed out that elections in the Philippines have traditionally become occasions for widespread extrajudicial executions, or the more popular police term of “salvaging,†of political opponents.
In this light of the Maguindanao massacre, the two said the first step is to ensure that police investigation is comprehensive and independent and must be followed by effective prosecution of those involved.
They stressed that the murder of political opponents, combined with a massive assault on media, must be tackled at various levels that go beyond standard investigation.
According to Alston and La Rue, the massacre reflects the “elite family-dominated manipulation of the electoral processes†which the government should work hard to eliminate in order.to ensure honest, clean and credible polls.
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