Representative Teodoro L.

Locsin, Jr
Argument for Martial Law in Maguindanao
10 December 2009

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Senate President,

This is how I sum up the government’s case.
It is not without irony that I stand here
defending martial law. But I do defend it.
Nowhere and at no other time has it been
better justified nor based more sufficiently on
incontrovertible facts.
Facts that call, indeed, cry out for the most
extreme exercise of the police power, which is
nothing less than martial law.
Facts, not legal quibbles.
Facts, not semantic distinctions of debatable
validity. Look at the bodies, look at the arms
stockpiles.
Is rebellion as defined by the Penal Code a
necessary condition for the validity of a
proclamation of martial law? Then where is the
definition of invasion in the Penal Code for the
validity of martial law in that case?
Since the repeal of the Anti-Subversion Act,

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ideology is not a component of rebellion.
I submit that rebellion here is not an exclusive
reference to a particular provision of a
particular law; but to a wide yet unmistakable,
general but not indiscriminate allusion to a
state of affairs that has deteriorated beyond
lawless violence, beyond a state of emergency,
to an obstinate refusal to discharge properly
the functions of civil government in the area,
by, of all people, the duly constituted but now
obstructive authorities therein.
It may be easier to repeat what Justice Potter
Stewart said about pornography than to fix
once and for all the meaning of the words
rebellion and invasion, in a swiftly changing
world, where both words can take on myriad
realities. He said he couldn’t exactly define
pornography but “I know it when I see it.”
We are seeing Maguindanao and what we see,
unless we are morally blind, cries out for
martial law—at least for now.
Here was an obstinate refusal to obey the law
and the lawful commands of the national
government, so as to constitute, on the part of
the once duly constituted authorities, an illegal
usurpation of the government offices they once
legally held; exercising them now, not for the
purposes of law, nor with the aim of doing
justice, but to use the powers and functions of

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that same government to frustrate the law, to
perpetuate injustice, to protect the
perpetrators of the most horrible crime in
Philippine history, and to preserve the political
influence that inspired the perpetrators with
the idea that they could commit such a crime
with total impunity.
This state of affairs calls for nothing less than
martial law; however you quibble with words.
It calls for martial law because just calling out
the armed forces was tried and proved wanting
to quell lawless violence and restore civil
government. The proclamation of martial law,
which was addressed as much at the armed
forces as at Maguindanao, send the signal to
all and sundry: henceforth soldiers are no
longer to obey nor to fear the politicians they
were once made to serve and pander to, in
derogation of their professional integrity, in the
name of a misguided strategy of mutual
deterrence in the ongoing secessionist conflict.
No, now the soldiers are beholden only to the
law and the lawful institutions like the
Executive and Congress in Joint Session
Assembled.
Martial Law sends the needed signal to our
soldiers and police that now they need no
longer be respecters of special persons but
only of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, of

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the civil and criminal laws, of the State and not
the temporary occupants of its public offices.
Thus are soldiers and police emboldened to do
their proper duty, to use their lawful force to
the utmost lawful extent, as to achieve the
specific aim of the proclamation; which, in this
case, is to arrest with proper warrants anyone
and everyone remotely connected to the
massacre. There is no constitutional immunity
from arrest, only from arrest without warrant
and detention without charge.
And then proceed, as I hope they are doing, to
destroy the political infrastructure of one
warlord family—though I hope not to favor the
other one—and permanently dismantle their
political influence in the province—though I
hope not to establish the political influence of
the other warlord clan. But that is only my
hope. It is martial law that shocked and awed
the elements of the Ampatuan army to
surrender without a fight.
This is the smallest atonement that the
national government and the Ampatuans can
make for the worst crime in Philippine history—
the national government for arming them and
the Ampatuans for using those arms so
hideously.
It is asked: If there is martial law to round up
the Ampatuans, why not extend the martial law

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to contain the MILF and even go after the drug
trade? Willoughby suggests that a
proclamation of martial law should have a
specific aim and should not wander from that
aim, that that aim being achieved, the mission
should be declared accomplished, and martial
law lifted in the area. Anyway, it can be re-
imposed again, and again, and again, and
again—as it can be reviewed by the Congress
in Joint Session as frequently.
To this day, martial law in Maguindanao has
not, despite the martial energy it has imparted
to the military and police, occasioned a single
abuse. True, soldiers kicked down the door to
Governor Ampatuan’s hospital room.
That is not an offense in law. Lese majeste is
not a crime in a democracy. That is not even
an offense against the door, because a door
has no legal standing to complain of being
kicked even before the Supreme Court.
Remember, soldiers kicked the door and not
the governor.
And it was a hospital door. The hospital can
seek damages, if it dares, after harboring a
fugitive.
Our soldiers have not violated a single
fundamental right, not even of the perpetrators
of this hideous crime. Far from it, our soldiers
have secured the fundamental rights of the

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ordinary people of Maguindanao from the
depredations of the Ampatuan family and its
goons, whether in their lingering terror of this
family they admit it or not. This is known as the
Stockholm Syndrome.
So here, by whatever name you choose to call
it, is a situation comprising an obstinate,
querulous, snarling, vicious, refusal to obey the
laws and the lawful orders of the government,
on the part of a now renegade government and
escalating from stubborn resistance to
threatening posture, so as to constitute in the
mind of the Executive a threat so certain that
its actuality could only be established beyond
cavil by the senseless sacrifice of soldiers to
prove the threat real and not just looming or
imminent.
This state of affairs includes what the Penal
Code calls sedition and a host of other felonies
and offenses; but which, regardless of which
definition you prefer, constitutes for any
reasonable person a state of conflict.
What Willoughby said, referring to martial law
enforcers, ironically applies not to our soldiers
but to their targets, the Ampatuans and their
henchmen. “No man in this country is so high
that he is above the law” as the Ampatuans
believed. “No officer of the law may set that
law at defiance with impunity.”

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The Ampatuans were the first to impose
martial law in Maguindanao without any basis
but their undying thirst for power, which could
only be slaked by the blood of anyone they
disliked.
To the martial law of the Ampatuans, the only
adequate response was martial law by the
government, which is the exercise of the
inherent police power to secure the public
safety through the armed forces.
True, the courts were functioning when martial
law was proclaimed,
And true all government offices were open for
business—but it was only for monkey business,
for the benefit only of the Ampatuans, and
against the lawful requirements of the State.
The civil registrar refused to issue death
certificates for the victims of the Maguindanao
Massacre, I guess because he could not put
mass suicide as the cause of death. It has been
suggested in this House that, while the
Maguindanao Massacre allegedly happened, it
was not the perpetrators who did it. I guess it
was suicide.
In military doctrine, Mr. Senate President and
former Defense Minister Enrile, capability
amounts to intent. That this fully documented
capability and inclination to mount armed

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mayhem came from the legally constituted
provincial government of Maguindanao only
compounded the gravity of the situation and
brought it within the ambit of the historical
precedents that have so wisely informed the
jurisprudence of martial law as I vividly recall
from 1972. It is, as Secretary Puno aptly
compared, as though regular battalions of the
AFP had gone renegade.
Was the danger so substantial as to warrant
martial law?
How many really are the loyalists of the
Ampatuans? A thousand, two, three?
I would answer, 50 is already a lot because
from newspaper accounts over the years,
encounters between AFP units and MILF forces
of that size but superior weaponry usually
result in—what?—25 percent casualties among
our troops?
Is it proposed that we should have sacrificed
our soldiers, by leaving them as sitting ducks,
until the Ampatuans drew first blood, just to
banish baseless not to mention insincere fears
that this martial law is legally flawed?
I have heard it said that the biggest danger of
this martial law is that, if it succeeds, will have
a demonstration effect convincing the general
public that perhaps the Army, like the French

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with regard to sex, just do it better when it
comes to securing the public safety.
Well, what of it?
Is it proposed that we let the public suffer, that
we leave a community terrorized and
paralyzed by monsters, just so we can stop the
Army from proving that they can do some
things better?
Why this instinctive suspicion and contempt of
our soldiers? These are not soldiers of Marcos’s
martial law, some of whom, let us not forget
were critical to the toppling of the dictatorship.
Far from violating any fundamental rights, our
soldiers are securing those rights for everyone
in Maguindanao against the depredations of
this warlord clan.
Why this instinctive mistrust of the armed
forces without whose sacrifices our country
would be smaller by one third?
And for their sacrifices, what is the soldier’s
pay? Piddling. What are the soldiers’ rations? A
can of sardines and a small reused plastic bag
of old rice. And what is their recompense?
Ingratitude and suspicion. I say leave this
martial law to complete its mission. It shouldn’t
take long.

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