MANILA, Philippines -- President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines said Wednesday that he had not specifically authorized the raid that left 44 elite police officers dead Sunday and jeopardized a peace deal with rebels in the country's south.
"'Can we proceed with the mission?' I don't think I was ever asked that question," Aquino said during a nationally televised speech, without specifying who had ordered the operation.
About 400 police officers from an elite counterterrorism unit conducted the raid early Sunday in a remote part of the southern island of Mindanao to capture a top terrorism suspect. Police say the suspect, Zulkifli bin Hir, a senior leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network who also goes by the name Marwan, was killed in the operation.
The raid was conducted near areas where the Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebel group operates, and its chairman, Al Haj Murad Ebrahim, said Wednesday that his group had not been informed of the operation, as is required under the cease-fire agreement it signed with the government in March. He said his fighters were acting in self-defense when they fired on the police.
Since then, a national debate has raged about the raid, with photos of the dead police officers circulating on social media and some former military and police officials calling for a full-scale military offensive against the rebels.
The government has responded by calling for calm, dismissing two senior police officials and announcing an investigation of the raid. The spokesman for the national police, Wilben Mayor, was relieved of duty Wednesday. On Tuesday, the head of the unit that conducted the operation, Getulio Napenas, was removed.
In his speech Wednesday, Aquino acknowledged that there had been poor coordination of the raid among the police, the military and the rebels. He said that he expected the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to assist with the government investigation and to help identify the rebels who were involved in the gunbattle with the police. Other groups, including the smaller Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, who are opposed to the peace deal, were also involved in the fighting, he said.
Some congressmen have called for retribution and the surrender of insurgents involved in the clash, which killed a handful of rebels.
"The only way forward," said Sen. Ralph Recto, in a statement released Wednesday, is for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front "to surrender their men who were responsible for the killing of the policemen."
Several influential lawmakers in the Philippines have withdrawn their support for a bill that would formalize the agreement signed in March, which was intended to end more than four decades of violence.
The proposal, the Bangsamoro Basic Law, would give a degree of autonomy to Muslim communities in the southern Philippines and would allow local governments to keep a greater share of tax revenue from the resource-rich area.
"This incident has tremendous political implications for the peace process," Rommel Banlaoi, executive director of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, said by telephone. "Some legislators have already withdrawn their support for the draft legislation, and there are other politicians calling for a halt to the debate on the law."
Because of the delicate nature of trying to capture an international terrorism suspect, only a few government officials were informed of the raid, Banlaoi said. The resulting confusion set off rumors and a public backlash.
On Monday, Sens. Alan Peter Cayetano and Joseph Victor Gomez Ejercito withdrew their support for the Bangsamoro Basic Law, and Sen. Ferdinand Marcos called for an end to the debate on the bill. Other lawmakers, including the Senate president, Franklin Drilon, have called for deliberations to continue while the episode is investigated.
"I'm withdrawing my co-authorship of the BBL, and I seriously doubt if there will ever be a peace agreement," said Cayetano, who described the clash Sunday as a "slaughter" that cast doubt on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's commitment to peace.
On Tuesday, Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno made a rare public statement, calling for sobriety in reaction to the fighting and continued support for the peace process.
"A call for war and retribution should never be made lightly and should remain always a final option," Sereno said. "It should certainly not be made in the heat of the moment and in the face of, as yet, unclear facts and confusing narratives."
A Section on 01/29/2015