(Francisco Lara Jr. is a research associate at the Crisis States Research Center, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics.)

The eruption of violence and the declaration of martial law in Maguindanao exposes the dynamics of collaboration and conflict between allies who advance their interests in conditions of war. Without this backdrop the recent declaration of martial law will be seen as baseless, unnecessary, and rife with hidden agendas. Why should government declare martial law in an area which had been under de-facto military rule over the past two weeks?

Prior to the massacre the Ampatuan clan was the “stationary bandit” in Maguindanao and the overlord of the ARMM. Witness the line of governors from the ARMM that made obeisance to Andal Sr. and pledged their unwavering support to his regime. It demonstrates the elite bargain purchased and coerced by the Ampatuan clan among the Moro elite, which transformed the regional authority into a powerful force unmatched by previous administrations.

For the first time in the ARMM’s history, powerful governors marched in step with the overlord, condoning years of violence and corruption in exchange for a share in the licit and illicit revenues to be gained from a region that is part of the Philippine state only in name and location.

Meanwhile, the ruling coalition bound itself to the dominant clan through an arrangement that brought huge revenues and state-of-the-art weaponry to the latter in exchange for the votes and violence that secured the authority of the ruling coalition. Collaboration facilitated electoral fraud and a subsequent cover-up. Collaboration enabled the state to harness the clan’s armed threat to ensure compliance among competitors and to protect the instigators. Collaboration provided the muscle that would stem any intervention or meddling by rebel forces and other armed groups.

But elite bargains are by nature extremely fragile, and fraught with complications. They are also confusing, especially when the state engages in the same illicit activities which it should be suppressing. So when we see guns and ammunition stamped with DND and AFP logos in the possession of ruthless paramilitaries, we are shocked by the collusion between rulers and warlords who partake from the same bounty gained from the underground trade in illegal weapons.

The key is to see the agents of both sides in the political divide, i.e., rulers and warlords, as rival groups vying for the same scarce economic and political resources, alternately colluding and colliding with each other, faced with the same incentive to gain more at the expense of the other. The same may be said about the inter-clan warfare that erupted in Central Mindanao, where demographic pressures were partly to blame according to conflict analyst Ed Quitoriano. In his view, the violence was a direct result of the diminishing resources available in terms of territory and government positions. These could no longer accommodate the children and descendants of the patriarchs who wanted to carve their own space within the region.

The arrangement approximates what the conflict scholar David Keen calls a “sell game” (rigged game), where rivals collude based on the shared aim to “make money” and to “stay alive,” or collide when one party undermines the other. The alliance can endure over long periods of time if each side recognizes the possibilities and limits of the game. However, the game eventually ends when one, or both players over-reach. This was the case in 2001, when President Joseph Estrada’s "over-reach" led to Chavit Singson’s withdrawal from a bargain that came dangerously close to his own annihilation. The Maguindanao massacre reflects the same "over-reach" that now dooms the partnership with Ampatuan.

In such a scenario, conflict becomes the fruit of collaboration. The side effect of a ruptured alliance is that a rival who knows the real score may turn from concealing towards revealing this deadly arrangement. Worse, the rival may engage in armed confrontation that can threaten the security of the entire ruling coalition.

This is when a massacre becomes useful, and militarization becomes inevitable.

The unintended consequence of the Maguindanao massacre was to provide the rationale and recourse to militarization. Militarization in turn puts the squeeze on a rival who is punished and coerced to accept the new set of rules, i.e., a new elite bargain. In this context martial law is simply the next logical step in a politico-military rescue effort aimed at engineering a smooth transition from one clan to another, away from the prying eyes of media, the international community, and the public.

The ultimate beneficiaries are the national political elites including some Moro elites hungry for the same privilege and power which Ampatuan possessed. This new alliance appears dead-set on redressing the power imbalance built and nurtured through years of protection, corruption, and the use of local elites for black ops.

Martial law cripples the Ampatuan clan’s chances of maintaining the same politico-military dominance, and may be hard put maintaining a significant fraction of its influence and firepower. This does not mean that the Ampatuan clan should be written off, only that the conditions for a rebound will not emerge until some sort of palatable justice is served, or a new arrangement is forged with the state, probably under the next administration. Nevertheless, the ruling coalition is now in a position to redistribute power to other contenders and to restore the political momentum in their hands.

DILG Secretary Ronaldo Puno’s comments on the likely transition are illustrative. He argues that vice governors will replace governors, vice mayors will replace mayors, so on and so forth. Following the constitutional provision that prohibits military governance over civilian authority, the Ampatuan clan will be coerced into ceding power to the next link in the civilian chain of command. In the interim, these new political authorities may share the same surname and are likely to be clones of the Ampatuans. Eventually, a new warlord clan will emerge to trump the rest.

The situation teaches us to analyze the conflict in Muslim Mindanao by looking at violence and conflict as a system where the economic and political interests of warlords and rulers alternately collude and collide. That knowledge will in turn highlight the fatal flaw that produced the bloodshed on November 23, 2009. In a region where political animosities were often resolved by gerrymandering the political geography to accommodate diverse and powerful claimants or by threatening overwhelming force, the government relied instead on a strategy which it is slowly getting used to. Apprised of the looming violence between the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clan, the President and her operators tried to fix the problem by convincing the latter to drop their electoral challenge. In short—to back-off.

As we all know, that strategy failed with tragic consequences.

Dean and Professor of Law University of the Philippines

The heinous massacre of civilians in Ampatuan, Maguindanao deserves competence of the highest order in the gathering, preserving, and evaluation of evidence as well as in the subsequent arrest and prosecution of its perpetrators. It should also be the platform for a sober approach that will comprehensively address the issue of private armies of misguided politicians. Any meaningful solution should be led by civilians preferably those who can remain independent of influence from national public officials who have openly declared partisan interests in the upcoming election.

The President should also observe an extraordinary level of transparency and accountability with this declaration. She must clearly demonstrate why martial law needs to be declared. The proclamation of martial law can be used as a means to gain unfair advantage in the upcoming elections or as an excuse to declare a failure of elections contrary to the people’s will. The need for transparency and accountability is even more urgent given the unnecessary proclamation from the spokespersons of the Office of the President that the incumbent has remained “friends” with those widely suspected of having committed the atrocities in Mindanao. The need for transparency and accountability is also necessary in the light of the role of the suspected perpetrators in the controversies surrounding the 2004 elections.

Under the 1987 Constitution, martial law can only be declared in cases of invasion or rebellion and only when public safety demands it. Rebellion requires that there is at least a taking up of arms publicly directed against an existing government. Martial law cannot be declared because the state has failed to prevent massive human rights violations by leaders that the national government itself has nurtured. Martial law cannot be proclaimed to cover up the lack of professional competence in the gathering, preservation, evaluation of evidence, and in the arrest and detention of the perpetrators. Martial law is also not the proper legal response to the issuance of a writ of amparo in favor of the Ampatuan family.

A report on how the proclamation was executed must be made within 48 hours of its proclamation to both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Congress must convene within 24 hours after it is proclaimed. Any proclamation of martial law by the President can only have a maximum effectivity of 60 days. This can be revoked (or extended) by Congress. Any revocation by Congress cannot be overturned by the President. In case martial law has been proclaimed, the electoral ambitions of all members of the House of Representatives and the Senate should be put aside so that they can observe their obligations required in the Constitution.

The proclamation of martial law does not supplant the civilian bureaucracy. It does not supplant the operation of the Constitution including its provisions for the protection of individual and collective rights. It does not supplant the operations of local government nor the fact that local governance is subject to existing law. Martial law does not automatically suspend the writ of habeas corpus or justify illegal arrests and detention. In other words, it is not authority for the commander in chief or the military to replace civilian government. Certainly, the public should be encouraged to engage the courts should there be any violation of any provision of law or the Constitution.

Abuse of executive privilege will only tarnish the memories of those who have been martyred by the violent excesses of misguided public officials. I call for vigilance for competent, transparent, accountable government as well as for the protection of human rights of peoples in Mindanao.

The Maguindanao massacre predicts the eruption of wider violence and conflict as the nation heads towards the 2010 elections. Yet to dismiss this incident as "election-related" is to miss the fundamental political and economic implications of this evil deed. The massacre is rooted in the shift in politico-economic sources of violence and conflict in Muslim Mindanao. It signifies the emergence of new-type warlords whose powers depend upon their control of a vast illegal and shadow economy and an ever-growing slice of internal revenue allotments (IRA). Both factors induce a violent addiction to political office.

The economic basis of the elite bargain has changed since then. Political office has become more attractive due to the billions of pesos in IRA remittances that electoral victory provides. The "winner-takes-all" nature of local electoral struggles in Muslim Mindanao also means that competition is costlier and bloodier. Meanwhile, political authority may enable control over the formal economy, but the bigger prize is the power to monopolize or to extort money from those engaged in the lucrative business of illegal drugs, gambling, kidnap-for-ransom, gun-running, and smuggling, among others. The piracy of software, CDs and DVDs, and the smuggling of pearls and other gemstones from China and Thailand are seen as micro and small enterprises. These illegal economies and a small formal sector comprise the "real" economy of Muslim Mindanao.

The failure to appreciate how this underground economy, coupled with entitlements to massive government-to-government fund transfers, shapes prevailing notions of political legitimacy and authority in the region partly explains the inability of the central state to deal with lawlessness and conflict.

Political legitimacy in Muslim Mindanao has very little to do with protecting people's rights or providing basic services. People rarely depend on government for welfare provision, and are consequently averse to paying any taxes. People actually expect local leaders to pocket government resources, and are willing to look the other way so long as their clans dominate and they are given a small slice during elections. Legitimacy is all about providing protection to your fellow clan members by trumping the firepower of your competitors, leaving people alone, and forgetting about taxes.

There were positive signs in the recent past, especially among the Moro women and youth who bore the brunt of conflict and who sought a different future. But achieving their aspirations depends on their ability to rise above clan structures and the dynamics of hierarchy and collective self-defense that bound its members. This dilemma was painfully exposed in the Maguindanao massacre, where Moro women who usually played a strategic role in negotiating an end to rido became its principal victims.

The sad thing about the recent massacre is that it could have been avoided. Everyone in Central Mindanao knew about the looming violence between the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans as early as March 2009, when the latter's patriarch Pax Mangudadatu confronted Andal Ampatuan in a public gathering and made known his clan's intention to challenge the latter's political hold on Maguindanao. This threat was in turn based on the knowledge that Ampatuan was planning to undermine the Mangudadatus by fielding a challenger against them in Sultan Kudarat.

In short, the "looming" rido which pundits are predicting today actually started more than six months ago. Yet neither Malacanang nor the Comelec, PNP, and the AFP made any attempt to monitor their activities, disarm their private security, demobilize their loyalists within the police and military, and ring-fence their camps.

Why?

The answer lies in the newfound role of Muslim Mindanao to national political elites. The region is known for a long history of electoral fraud. The difference today lies in its ability to provide the millions of votes that can overturn the results of national electoral contests, a situation brought about by the creation of a sub-national state (ARMM) and reinforced by the sort of democratic political competition in the post-Marcos era that makes local bosses more powerful and national leaders more beholden to them. This was the case in the presidential elections of 2004 and the senatorial race in 2007. It will serve the same purpose in 2010. Whose purpose is served by arresting Ampatuan in an election year? Certainly not those of the ruling coalition.

This partly explains the foot dragging and the lame treatment of principal suspects in the massacre. And to those pressing for limited martial rule in Maguindanao, beware what you wish for. Having a surfeit of troops on the ground can provide a superficial peace at best. At worse, it may facilitate the same type of electoral fraud in 2010, or leverage the firepower of one clan over another.

In a region where the rebellion-related conflict between the GRP-MILF received all of the national and international community's attention and aid, NGOs such as International Alert and the Asia Foundation have often decried the ignorance and indifference of the government and donor agencies to community-based inter and intra clan violence. As International Alert asserts, it is time to focus on the confluence between both types and sources of violence and conflict. Indifference will only lead to more death and destruction as the election approaches, when a convergence between rebellion-related, and inter and intra clan conflict occurs as military forces and armed rebels take sides between warring clans and factions.

Mindanao scholars such as Patricio Abinales, James Putzel, and John Sidel have previously noted how local strong men made Mindanao, and how the region provided an ideal case of the country's "imperfect democracy" and "political bossism." More recently, the conflict scholar Stathis Kalyvas called attention to the birth of "ruthless political entrepreneurs" who shape and are shaped by the dynamics between states, clans, and conflict.

The viciousness of the Maguindanao attack shows how these phenomena resonate here. It demonstrates the weak and narrow reach of the central Philippine state in Muslim Mindanao, and how the continued reliance on local strong men will not end the cycle of violence.

Writers are always told: Show, don’t tell. So when I tell you that the wheels of justice in this country grind slowly, not only should I be hauled off to writer’s gaol for repeating a cliché, I should also be committed to solitary confinement for committing the cardinal vice of telling, not showing. But if I tell you that in a month’s time, 23 years will have elapsed since the gruesomely tortured bodies of labor leader Ka Lando Olalia and Leonor Alay-ay were found discarded in a secluded area in Antipolo without a single perpetrator having been brought to justice, will that satisfy the rule?

In 1998, the case broke wide open two witnesses came forward, Medardo Dumlao Barreto and Eduardo E. Bueno, former soldiers affiliated with the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM); both executed affidavits recounting their involvement in the slaying of Ka Lando and Ka Leonor. Barreto and Bueno named Col. Eduardo E. Kapunan, Jr. and Oscar E. Legaspi, among others, as being in the thick of the preparation and execution of the plot. That, however, was only the beginning of what would become a quixotic quest for justice. Eleven years after Barreto and Bueno came forward, Kapunan and Legaspi are still to be arrested; they have not been arraigned and they have not been placed in detention. Twenty-three years after Ka Lando and Ka Leonor were killed, the crimes are still unpunished.

The reason is that to this day, Kapunan and Legaspi have, through legal machinations, defied every attempt to arrest them, even though the Supreme Court has ruled, with finality, that they are not entitled to the defense of amnesty and that a prima facie case for the double murder exists against them. They may have lost that battle, but it’s a war of attrition they are waging. The purpose of delay is to wear the enemy down; that or wait for the parties and their witnesses to die, in the meantime, avoid detention for a non-bailable offense.

I am devoting this issue’s column to Ka Lando and Ka Leonor because I am afraid. I am afraid that as time lurches on, people will begin forgetting who they are and what they fought for. Rolando Olalia and the assassinated Senator Benigno Aquino share one thing in common: both were gunned down for principles for which they were willing to lay down their lives. Where they differ is that Ka Lando did not have a wife who would later become President or a daughter with a genius for keeping her family’s surname foremost in the public’s mind. Ka Lando’s face isn’t stamped on any money bills and his name isn’t appended to an international airport; the only infrastructure dedicated to him is the road, known now as Olalia Drive, near where his body was recovered. He hasn’t achieved that iconic status that makes it cool for his likeness to be silkscreened onto t-shirts, like Che Guevarra, or an article of fashion to be inextricably linked with him, like Fidel Castro’s caps. His name will live on, certainly, but only in some dusty archives, rediscovered by a student required to do research, but still, only a name and a fuzzy image preserved on microfilm in a library, but his murder may still go unsolved, and that’s the danger.

Metaphors involving justice are usually unflattering. One, already mentioned, tells of wheels that grind slowly. Another is that of a woman blindfolded so that she can dispense justice without favoring anyone. But combining the two, we have the image of a blindfolded woman behind the wheel, so is it any wonder that justice proceeds like a hearse? (Editor's note: This was posted here with permission of the author.)