Martial Law Is Rescinded in a Philippine Province

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 12, 2009

MANILA — Stung by severe criticism and faced with a possible rebuke by the Supreme Court, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo lifted martial law on Saturday in a strife-torn southern Philippine province.

Maguindanao Province, where 57 people were killed last month in the country’s worst election-related violence, will remain under a state of emergency as the police and the military continue to investigate a powerful political family whose members are accused of carrying out the massacre and then fomenting rebellion to prevent family members from being arrested.

Mrs. Arroyo had imposed martial law there after the massacre, allowing the government to make arrests without warrants. It was the first time martial law had been imposed in the Philippines since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, which ended in 1986.

Eduardo Ermita, Mrs. Arroyo’s executive secretary, said the president decided to lift the Dec. 4 decree after murder and rebellion charges had been filed against the suspects in the massacre, including members of the Ampatuan clan, close allies of Mrs. Arroyo’s who had ruled the province for much of this decade.

“The local government is back and functioning,” he said. “We can say rebellion has been addressed and the purpose for which it was called has been achieved.”

During the eight days of martial law, the authorities arrested dozens of suspects, among them members of a militia controlled by the Ampatuans, and raided a number of houses and properties that yielded more than 1,500 weapons that the government said were being used in a rebellion.

Prosecutors previously said they had identified at least 161 people who were to be charged with the massacre.

Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, the military administrator of Maguindanao during the martial law period, said Saturday that the end of martial law would not affect the operations to go after the suspects in the massacre and the rebellion.

“We shall continue with the military and police operations against the remaining suspects and strengthen even more our checkpoints to ensure that people are insulated against hostile acts,” he said.

The massacre on Nov. 23 appeared to have been an effort by members of the Ampatuan family to prevent a rival from filing papers to run for governor, the authorities said. The dead included family members and supporters of the rival politician, Esmael Mangudadatu, as well as 30 journalists who were covering the event.

Andal Ampatuan Jr., a local mayor who was also running for governor, was accused of leading the killings.

At least 25 murder charges have been filed against him, with others to follow, prosecutors said.

Mr. Ermita said that 247 others faced charges for taking part in the massacre and that 24 people, including the clan patriarch, Andal Ampatuan Sr., had been charged with rebellion.

Mrs. Arroyo’s martial-law declaration had been met with intense criticism in a country still smarting from the Marcos era.

While there was no question of a massacre, there is much debate about whether a rebellion existed, and critics have questioned whether the Arroyo administration made the claim a pretext for imposing martial law.

Under the Constitution, martial law can be declared only if there is an invasion by a foreign power or a rebellion. Critics contended that neither requirement was present.

Several individuals and members of the political opposition had filed petitions before the Supreme Court demanding the order be overturned. The court had asked the government to submit its response to these petitions by Monday.

Jejomar Binay, an opposition leader and vocal Arroyo critic, called the government’s decision to lift the decree “a face-saving gesture.”

The Ampatuans have denied involvement in the massacre or leading a rebellion.

The Making of a Massacre in the Philippines

The Philippines reaches the limit in a culture of impunity

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 10, 2009

SHARIFF AGUAK, the Philippines — Two things may help to explain the violent power politics in this impoverished part of the southern Philippines: the red-roofed and high-walled mansions that have long dominated the center of this town, and the men in uniform carrying automatic weapons who guarded them.

The opulent mansions, the only ones here in the capital of Maguindanao Province, are owned by the family of Andal Ampatuan Sr., the patriarch of the political dynasty that has ruled this part of the island of Mindanao for much of this decade.

Today, the mansions are surrounded by soldiers and police officers, while family members face multiple charges of murder for alleged involvement in a massacre that shocked a country seemingly inured to political violence.

On Nov. 23, a convoy of vehicles — carrying the wife, three sisters and an aunt of Esmael Mangudadatu, the vice mayor of a small town nearby, as well as supporters, journalists and lawyers — was stopped by dozens of armed men at a checkpoint outside Shariff Aguak. At gunpoint, the vehicles, along with another car that had happened to be behind them, were forced down a dirt road to a windblown hilltop.

The armed men — who the authorities say were working for the Ampatuans — then shot and hacked 57 people to death. Some of the women, investigators say, were raped and sexually mutilated.

“They were so confident with their power that they carried out something like this and believed they could get away with it,” said Kim Bagundang, a Maguindanao resident and president of the Liguasan Youth Association for Sustainable Development, a nonprofit organization.

The reason for the massacre was clear, the authorities said. Mr. Mangudadatu’s relatives and supporters had been on their way to file his candidacy papers for governor of Maguindanao in elections next year — a direct challenge to the Ampatuans, who have ruled virtually unchallenged.

The Ampatuans’ control of Maguindanao is almost absolute. Most of the province’s 36 towns are run by mayors and deputy mayors who are either sons, grandsons, cousins, nephews, in-laws or close allies of the senior Mr. Ampatuan, according to a study by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

Since he became governor in 1998, Mr. Ampatuan has carved out at least eight towns from existing ones and named all of them after his sons and other relatives. The entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which is composed of five predominantly Muslim provinces, including Maguindanao, is run by Governor Zaldy Ampatuan, one of his sons.

The Ampatuans’ control of Maguindanao was enforced with guns and a culture of fear in towns governed by the family, residents and the authorities said. Many residents are afraid to talk at all about the Ampatuans. “No, no, no,” a resident in the town of Datu Unsay said when asked to comment on the massacre.

“People here live in fear,” a driver who lives in nearby Cotabato City, said of Shariff Aguak. “No one will dare go against the Ampatuans.”

One factor in what experts have called the “culture of impunity” that the Ampatuans have enjoyed in Maguindanao may be suggested by the enormous billboards erected at infrastructure projects around the province lauding the accomplishments of the family. Almost all of them also thank President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her help in making the projects possible — highlighting the political connection between the Ampatuans and the central government in Manila.

“The Ampatuan family dynasty has backed President Arroyo since 2001, and its rise to power is likewise attributed to Mrs. Arroyo’s support,” said Bobby Tuazon, an analyst at the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, a Manila nonprofit organization that has studied the political dynamics of the provinces. The Ampatuans, he said, were “an extension of Arroyo’s political base.”

In the 2004 elections, Mrs. Arroyo won resounding victories in Maguindanao; in at least three towns, her opponent, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., got no votes at all, according to the official results. An independent election monitor found widespread fraud in the election that year.
For the Ampatuans, as well as for the chiefs of other impoverished provinces, there are very lucrative reasons for chasing political patronage in Manila.

Maguindanao is the second-poorest province in the Philippines, according to government statistics. It is mainly agricultural and has no industry to speak of. What it does have, however, is a lot of voters who can be delivered to national candidates in return for tax revenues and political patronage that can keep local politicians firmly in power.

Francisco Lara, at the Development Studies Institute of the London School of Economics, says the potential for making money from politics has given rise to a class of “ruthless political entrepreneurs” in the Philippines.

“Political office has become more attractive due to the billions of pesos in I.R.A. remittances that electoral victory provides,” Mr. Lara said, referring to the internal revenue allotment, the share of national taxes for local governments. “The ‘winner-takes-all’ nature of local electoral struggles in Muslim Mindanao also means that competition is costlier and bloodier.”

And often more corrupt, according to Mr. Tuazon and other experts.

Figures from the Department of Budget and Management show that Maguindanao’s overall revenue in 2006 was 603 million pesos, or about $13 million — of which 570 million pesos came from national taxes. At least a third of these funds went to personnel and operating expenses. According to the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism, which has closely examined the issue, such funds are a major source of corruption within the Philippine bureaucracy.

The Commission on Audit’s annual reports on Maguindanao have consistently highlighted deficiencies in bookkeeping. For instance, in its 2008 audit report, the commission found that it could not ascertain the validity of the provincial accountant’s claim that the province had more than 107 million pesos deposited in banks. It also could not verify the existence of properties and assets worth 345 million pesos that the province said it had.

In 2006, the position of the Ampatuans was strengthened by Mrs. Arroyo’s decision to allow local government chiefs to set up armed militias to support the police and the military in their fight against criminals and insurgents.

Abhoud Syed Lingga, executive director of the Institute for Bangsamoro Studies in Cotabato City, who has studied the rise of the militias, said local chiefs across the country had used the order to create their own private armies.

The Ampatuans, he said, did so with more enthusiasm than anyone else. The police and military estimate that the Ampatuans employ between 400 and 600 of these armed men.

Up to now, the military has been supportive of the Ampatuans, Mr. Lingga said, because the clan actively fought the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the insurgent rebels fighting for a Muslim homeland in Mindanao.

All that changed on Nov. 23, when the armed men who the authorities say were working for the Ampatuans — among them police officers and militiamen — killed the 57 people on the hillside.

When soldiers, who had been alerted about the abduction, arrived at the mass graves — at a site overlooking the town of Ampatuan — several bodies remained unburied. Some were still in vehicles; in one van the driver was slumped, dead, on the steering wheel.

The backhoe used to dig the graves, its claw stuck in the ground, was still running — a “mute witness to this atrocity,” as Felicisimo Khu, the police superintendent who oversaw the recovery of the bodies, put it. Printed in black ink on the side of the backhoe, as on most of the equipment at infrastructure projects around Maguindanao, was the name of Andal Ampatuan Sr.

According to Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina of the Manila police, who serves as spokesman for the investigation, the primary suspect in the massacre, Andal Ampatuan Jr., was present when the armed men stopped the convoy. According to the Justice Department, he ordered his men to carry out the slaughter. He did this, investigators said, in full view of witnesses, some of whom have agreed to testify.

Mr. Ampatuan Jr., who is in custody and has been charged with 25 counts of murder, has denied the allegations. This week, the authorities said they had filed rebellion charges against more members of the Ampatuans, days after the government put the whole of Maguindanao Province under martial law. Raids have been conducted by the police and the military in which at least 1,500 firearms and more than half a million rounds of ammunition have been found. On Wednesday, the police said they had named 161 suspects in the massacre.

Andal Ampatuan Sr., his family members and lawyers for the family did not respond to requests for interviews.

With the Ampatuans on the ropes, power in this province appears likely to shift to the family of Mr. Mangudadatu, the Buluan mayor — which has controlled the neighboring province of Sultan Kudarat for years.

Mr. Mangudadatu, 41, has brothers and uncles and cousins holding local positions in Maguindanao and in Sultan Kudarat Province. Unlike Andal Ampatuan Sr., however, not one of his eight children is in power, Mr. Mangudadatu said in an interview.

That may change next year. “I want my eldest son,” he said, “to run as vice mayor to replace me.”

Just days after the massacre, Mr. Mangudadatu filed his candidacy papers for Maguindanao governor and said that only death could stop him from running. At this point, he seems certain to win.

On the day he filed his papers, he was accompanied by Gilberto Teodoro, who will be Mrs. Arroyo’s candidate for president in the election next year. Mr. Mangudadatu will run as a candidate of Mrs. Arroyo’s party, Lakas-Kampi, the same party that helped nurture the Ampatuans for years.

Gunmen in Philippines Free Children but Hold 57 Others

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 10, 2009

MANILA — Gunmen took 75 people, including schoolchildren, hostage on Thursday in the southern Philippines, officials said.

The gunmen released the 17 children and an elderly woman later in the day, the officials said.

Between 15 and 20 assailants took the hostages from an elementary school near the town of Prosperidad in Agusan del Norte, a province in Mindanao in the south after police officials tried to serve an arrest warrant on one of their leaders, said Ma. Randolph Cabangbang, an army spokesman.

The leader, identified as Ondo Perez, allegedly heads a criminal gang called the Perez Group and is wanted for the murder of a resident of the town.

Senior Superintendent Nestor Fajura, operations chief of the Philippine police in the region, told ABS-CBN television that Mr. Perez and his group took the hostages to prevent his arrest.

Also among the hostages were a teacher and two employees of a logging company Major Cabangbang said. Police have not yet established the identity or the condition of the remaining 57 hostages, he said.

Major Cabangbang said negotiators have been dispatched to the village to try to convince the men to surrender. “The situation remains fluid at this point,” he said by telephone from Mindanao.

Superintendent Fajura, the police official, said on national television that the abductors are demanding the withdrawal of the murder charge against Mr. Perez and a halt to police and military operations against the group.

Superintendent Fajura said they also demanded the presence of journalists during the negotiations. “We will try to work out the release of the other hostages,” he said.

Major Cabangbang said the military has sent reinforcements and a crisis management team to the town, about 500 miles south of Manila.

Earlier, police officials in Manila told reporters that shots had been fired near the scene of the abductions.

The hostage drama follows the recent massacre in Maguindanao Province, also in Mindanao, of 57 people — most of them journalists and media workers — by militiamen allegedly under the command of Andal Ampatuan Jr., a scion of Maguindanao’s most influential family.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, under pressure to resolve the case because the Ampatuans are her political allies, placed Maguindanao under martial law.

As in the Maguindanao case, where the killers have been identified by witnesses as militiamen, Mr. Perez is a former member of a paramilitary group that the military armed and trained to help in counter-insurgency operations, police officials said.

Local militias have often been accused of criminality and human rights violations.

Critics Challenge Martial Law in Philippines

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 7, 2009

MANILA — Critics of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo challenged her declaration of martial law in a southern province, as the government conducted more raids on Monday to battle what it calls an armed rebellion. Mrs. Arroyo’s critics, including legislators and civil libertarians, say she overstepped constitutional bounds when she put Maguindanao Province under martial law Friday.

Maguindanao, the site of a Nov. 23 massacre in which 57 people were killed, is a stronghold of supporters of the Ampatuan family, a powerful political clan linked to the violence. Before putting the province under martial law, Mrs. Arroyo had already declared a state of emergency in Manguindanao and nearby areas on Nov. 24.

Martial law has allowed the military and the police to arrest suspects without warrants and conduct raids on properties. Critics denounced the president, saying that neither of the two constitutional conditions for a martial law declaration — a foreign invasion or a rebellion — had been met.

The military has confiscated more than 1,500 firearms as well as half a million rounds of ammunition since the raids began Saturday, officials said. Maj. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, the martial law administrator, said Monday that the arms cache was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The latest raid, on Monday at the mansion of Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. in the provincial capital of Shariff Aguak, yielded more firearms and ammunition, General Ferrer said.

Maj. Gen. Gaudencio Pangilinan, the armed forces’ vice chief of staff for operations, said Monday that at least 10 percent of the recovered weapons and ammunition had markings indicating they came from the Defense Department. He said the Ampatuans must have collected those when they were still helping the military fight Islamic insurgents.

General Ferrer said the military had received intelligence reports that as many as 3,000 supporters of the Ampatuans across the province had amassed since the crackdown began and now presented a danger to the government. Ampatuan-linked militiamen clashed with the police on Sunday in Datu Unsay, near the site of the massacre and where the main suspect in those killings,

The mayor of the town, Andal Ampatuan Jr., is believed to have ordered the massacre. He surrendered a few days after the killings and is awaiting trial on multiple murder counts of murder.

His brother Zaldy, the governor of the Muslim autonomous region that includes Maguindanao, was taken into custody. Their father was taken Sunday to a military infirmary in the southern city of Davao because of high blood pressure, according to his family.

Four other Ampatuan brothers, as well as cousins and 41 supporters, were arrested, the authorities said.

On Sunday, Mrs. Arroyo submitted a report to Congress justifying her declaration, citing the danger posed by the Ampatuans and their followers. Mrs. Arroyo, who was a close political ally of the Ampatuans before the massacre, said martial law would continue “until the time that such rebellion is quelled.”

Didagen Dilangalen, a congressman and relative of the Ampatuans, said there had been no armed uprising in Maguindanao and that the talk about rebellion began after the martial-law declaration. He filed a petition before the Supreme Court on Monday challenging the declaration.

On Monday, 18 of the country’s 23 senators voted to oppose the martial law declaration, according to Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. However, only the House of Representatives can reject Mrs. Arroyo’s move. Because her allies dominate the lower house, it looks unlikely that will happen when both chambers meet Tuesday to consider the matter.

Dozens arrested in Philippine province under martial law

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 6, 2009

The military arrested dozens of people and seized caches of weapons after martial law was imposed over the weekend on a southern Philippine province where 57 people had been killed in a massacre, officials said Sunday.

The military so far has detained a total of 47 people, most of them this weekend, after taking control over Maguindanao Province, in an attempt to quell a rebellion by supporters of a powerful political family accused of carrying out a massacre two weeks ago, said Maj. Randolph Cabangbang of the army.

Among those arrested over the weekend were six members of the Ampatuan family, including the patriarch, Andal Ampatuan Sr., and his son, Zaldy, the governor of the five-province Muslim autonomous region that includes Maguindanao. A seventh member, Andal Ampatuan Jr., had been arrested earlier in the crackdown.

The military said Sunday that it had raided a property owned by the family patriarch and found 40 firearms, including Armalite assault rifles and ammunition. It was the latest in a series of raids.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo cited a breakdown of law and order in Maguindanao. Her announcement of martial law, made public on Saturday, drew some criticism.

The Ampatuans were once among Mrs. Arroyo’s closest political allies in the south, but they are now accused of staging the massacre, as well as a rebellion against her government.

‘‘Heavily armed groups in the province of Maguindanao have established positions to resist government troops thereby depriving the Executive of its powers and prerogatives to enforce the laws of the land to maintain public order and safety,’’ read a portion of Proclamation No. 1959, signed by Mrs. Arroyo late Friday.

Law and order, it said, ‘‘has deteriorated to the extent that local judicial system and other government mechanisms in the province are not functioning; thus, endangering public safety.’’

Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera said the imposition of martial law, which came with the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and allows the military to arrest suspects without a warrant, was necessary because of the rebellion being waged by the Ampatuan family. She also asserted that trying the Ampatuans in court would prove difficult because, according to her, no judge would hear the case, and because prosecutors had begged off from handling the case for fear of the Ampatuans. The family ruled the province for much of this decade and are known for their vast private army.

Brig. Gen. Gaudencio Pangilinan, operations chief of the armed forces of the Philippines, said at a briefing at the presidential palace that supporters of the Ampatuans had been massing in several areas around the province and that violence was imminent.

Ms. Devanadera said that Mrs. Arroyo was supposed to make a report to Congress about her decision to impose military rule in Maguindanao, as mandated by the Constitution.

‘‘All these actions that the government is doing are in accordance with the Constitution,’’ Ms. Devanadera said Sunday. ‘‘The declaration of martial law is not a taste test for doing the same in other parts of the country,’’ referring to the criticism that the move had generated.

While some Filipinos welcomed the declaration, some denounced it, calling it unnecessary.

‘‘It appears to me as an overreaction,’’ a former president, Fidel Ramos, told ABS-CBN television, a local station. Mr. Ramos, speaking from Sydney, is a former general who implemented martial law after it was imposed by Ferdinand Marcos in 1972.

The former ruler’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said Saturday that Filipinos ‘‘should watch closely how martial law will be used’’ by the government.

The criticism of Mrs. Arroyo centers on the two constitutional requirements for martial law: an invasion by a foreign power or a rebellion. Critics said neither of these two were present.

Before the declaration Friday night, government had not mentioned a rebellion. But Saturday, the justice secretary said that cases against the Ampatuans would not be classified as such.

‘‘They are criminals, not rebels,’’ said Luz Ilagan, a congresswoman who spoke at a protest in Manila on Saturday, referring to the Ampatuans.

Marvic Leonen, dean of the College of Law of the University of the Philippines, said Mrs. Arroyo ‘‘should also observe an extraordinary level of transparency and accountability with this declaration.’’

Mrs. Arroyo has been under pressure to act on the massacre of 57 people, including journalists and media workers, supporters and relatives of a rival political leader, as well as motorists who just happened to have been at the checkpoint where the convoy of victims was stopped. They were brought to a nearby hilltop where they were shot, hacked and buried using a backhoe owned by the provincial government of Maguindanao, where Andal Ampatuan Sr. is governor.

Inquiry of Philippines Massacre Urged

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 3, 2009

MANILA — Two United Nations human rights officials urged the government of the Philippines on Thursday to pursue a thorough investigation of the election-related massacre in which 57 people were killed, and the police recommended that murder charges be filed against 11 more suspects.

The massacre “must be seen as a watershed moment for the country,” said Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, and Frank La Rue, the special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, in a statement.

The killings, they said, “demanded a more extensive reflection on the elite family-dominated manipulation of the political processes and the need to eliminate such practices.”

The main suspect, Andal Ampatuan Jr., turned himself in last week, though he denies the accusations against him. The police recommended that charges be filed against other members of Mr. Ampatuan’s powerful family, including his brother, a governor, and his father, the clan patriarch. The Ampatuan clan wields considerable power in the southern Philippines and is closely allied with the party of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Mrs. Arroyo, who has been under intense pressure to take action on the killings, attended a wake Thursday for some of the journalists who were killed and spoke to their relatives. “We will help in the studies of the children as well in finding justice,” Mrs. Arroyo said.

The killings, the worst election-related violence in the country’s history, took place Nov. 23 when relatives of Esmael Mangudadatu, a politician in Maguindanao Province, were intercepted on their way to file Mr. Mangudadatu’s candidacy papers in a governor’s race. The 57 victims — among them Mr. Mangudadatu’s wife and lawyers, 30 journalists and media workers, and at least 15 motorists who were not part of the convoy and who just happened to be at the checkpoint at the wrong time — were suspected to have been killed by followers of Mr. Ampatuan.

Investigators said Mr. Ampatuan had also sought the governorship — a job his father currently holds — and ordered the massacre to prevent Mr. Mangudadatu from pursuing his candidacy .

Mr. Ampatuan faces at least 25 counts of murder. Prosecutors said more charges would be filed as the investigation progressed.

Since the attack, Ampatuan family members in the capital of Shariff Aguak have found their homes placed under heavy guard, and have been prevented from leaving the premises.

Their patriarch, Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., and another of his sons, Zaldy Ampatuan, who is governor of the five-province Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, have been identified as suspects.

The Ampatuans have denied that they were behind the massacre and complained that they are being unjustly persecuted. They have asked the courts to issue a restraining order that would prevent the police and the prosecutors from arresting family members without warrants.

Mrs. Arroyo has given broad powers to Reynaldo Puno, the Philippine interior secretary, including the possible suspension from public office of suspects and the possibility of warrantless arrests.

Mr. Espina, the police spokesman, said more than 400 members of the Ampatuan militia have also been disarmed.

Also on Thursday, four media groups released the initial report of a fact-finding team formed to investigate the killings. Among the findings were that the authorities had not yet fully confiscated the “enormous weapons arsenal” of the Ampatuan clan and that “fear grips residents near the site, preventing them from speaking out.”

Imelda Marcos Opens Run for Philippine Congress

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 2, 2009

MANILA — Imelda Marcos, the flamboyant widow of the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, filed last-minute papers on Tuesday declaring her candidacy for a seat in the Philippine Congress next year.

Mrs. Marcos, 80, served in Congress once before, in the 1990s, representing the province where she was born, Leyte. This time, she aims to represent the province of Ilocos Norte, the Marcos family’s stronghold in the northern Philippines.

Her son, Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr., is vacating his congressional seat there to run for senator, and a daughter, Imee, is running for governor. Mrs. Marcos’s papers were filed in Ilocos Norte about an hour before the deadline expired at midnight on Tuesday, her spokeswoman, Sol Vanzi, told Agence France-Presse.

The elections, scheduled for May, promise to offer more than one notable candidate. The filing came a day after Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the deeply unpopular Philippine president whose term ends in June, announced her own candidacy for Congress. She aims to represent her home district in Pampanga Province, just north of Manila. She is the first Philippine president to seek lower office.

The Marcos family, deposed and publicly humiliated during the first People Power revolt in the Philippines in 1986, never disappeared completely from the public eye.

Mr. Marcos died in exile in Honolulu in 1989, and Mrs. Marcos and her four children returned to the Philippines in 1991. She ran for president in 1992 but lost. Known for her thousands of shoes, her ostentatious lifestyle and her collection of jewelry, Mrs. Marcos has not been shy about making public statements or engaging in pursuits that tend to elicit mockery from the Philippine press. In 2006, she started what she described as a jewelry line made of trash and recycled materials.

“I love beauty and I am allergic to ugliness,” she told the British newspaper The Independent that same year.

She and her children have been successful in heading off lawsuits by the Philippine government to retrieve their billions in dollars of so-called ill-gotten wealth. Local courts have dismissed several of these cases, and she has never been sent to jail for any crime.

Nearly 10,000 victims of human-rights violations during her husband’s dictatorship have not been awarded the money promised them by the courts. But in June, a local court ruled that the government erred in confiscating $310 million worth of her jewelry and ordered it returned.

In September, several artists paid tribute to Mrs. Marcos in a gala event for the Cultural Center of the Philippines, one of her pet projects. The event was widely criticized — a mockery of People Power, went the charge — but went ahead anyway.

“Hopefully, what is beautiful in all of us will also unite us,” she told an entertainment magazine that evening as she sashayed one more time down the red carpet, her famous jewels glittering on her neck.

“I feel proud and I feel lucky to be a Marcos,” Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr. said last Friday, moments after he filed his candidacy papers for senator. The Marcos name, he told reporters, was an advantage, not a liability.

Philippine Mayor Is Charged in Massacre

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 1, 2009

MANILA — Prosecutors charged the scion of a powerful political clan in the southern Philippines with multiple counts of murder on Tuesday, eight days a after the massacre of 57 people, more than half of them journalists and media workers.

Andal Ampatuan Jr., the mayor of Datu Unsay in Maguindanao Province, was accused of leading the Nov. 23 slaughter of the wife, two sisters and an aunt of another politician, Esmael Mangudadatu, as well as his supporters and the journalists.

The chief state prosecutor, Jovencito Zuno, told reporters in Manila that authorities have detained at least 10 witnesses, several of whom allegedly saw Mr. Ampatuan with dozens of armed men stopping the victims’ convoy along the national highway in the town of Ampatuan. The victims were on their way to Shariff Aguak to file Mr. Mangudadatu’s candidacy papers for governor of Maguindanao, the position that Mr. Ampatuan also was seeking.

Investigators earlier said that the convoy, which included a vehicle with several passengers in it that happened to be at the checkpoint at the time the victims were flagged down, was then escorted to a grassy hilltop not far from the highway. There, armed men shot, hacked and buried the victims, using a backhoe that belonged to the provincial government whose governor is the defendant’s father, Andal Ampatuan Sr.

The Ampatuans are the closest political allies of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Muslim south and she has been under intense pressure to resolve the case, which is considered the worst election-related violence in Philippine history. Mrs. Arroyo ordered Interior Secretary Reynaldo Puno to take charge of the province and the rest of the Muslim region.

The prosecutors filed the charges against Mr. Ampatuan in the southern city of Cotabato, which is adjacent to Maguindanao, but are expected to ask the court to move the trial to Manila for security reasons.

Nestor Burgos Jr., chairman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, said a transfer to Manila would be ideal given the influence of the Ampatuan clan in the region. “Is there any judge in Mindanao willing to preside over the trial?” Mr. Burgos said in an interview. “A special court dedicated to the case would also hasten the process,” he added.

Mr. Burgos also urged the government to arrest more suspects. So far, only Mr. Ampatuan is in custody. “What about the 100 or so armed men who took part in the killing? Where are they now?” he asked, adding that the government had been “painstakingly slow” to act.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that seven other Ampatuan men, including the defendant’s father, are considered suspects but no charges have yet been filed against them. Mr. Zuno, the chief state prosecutor, said he expected more arrests in the coming days as investigators continue gathering evidence.

Mr. Ampatuan Jr. turned himself to the authorities last week and denied any involvement in the killings. On Sunday, his brother Zaldy, governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, held a press conference in the capital town of Shariff Aguak where he pleaded with investigators to “to observe due process of law.” He also asked the media to “please be fair in your reporting.”

Leo Dacera, who leads the team of prosecutors assigned to the case, told reporters on Tuesday they have two boxes of sworn statements by the witnesses and that they are confident they have a strong case.

Earlier, Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera revealed that several of the men who allegedly participated in the killings had agreed to testify and have sought government protection. She added that, according to the witnesses, the massacre had been planned in advance by the Ampatuans and that the mass graves had been dug before the attack.

Aside from the members of the Ampatuans’ militia, police officers were also involved in the killings, with at least two of them seen at the crime scene during the massacre, according to Erickson Velasquez, head of the police’s criminal investigation division.

Deeply unpopular, Arroyo tries a controversial gambit

Philippine President to Run for Congress

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: November 30, 2009

MANILA — Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the deeply unpopular Philippine president, announced Monday that she would run for a seat in Congress in elections scheduled for next year, ending months of speculation about her plans when her term ends in June but also raising questions about her long-term intentions.

“I have been mulling different ways to stay involved,” Mrs. Arroyo said in a taped message that a government radio station broadcast on Monday. “After much soul-searching, I have decided I will file my certificate of candidacy for Congress in order to serve the hard-working people of my province.”

Mrs. Arroyo, 62, is the longest serving and most unpopular president the country has had since Ferdinand Marcos. While she has survived several impeachment efforts, her administration has been embroiled in numerous scandals involving corruption and accused of involvement in the extrajudicial killing and abduction of hundreds of activists. Her closest political allies in the southern Philippines were implicated last week in the massacre of 57 people, most of them journalists, in the country’s worst case of election-related violence.

An American-educated economist, Mrs. Arroyo became president in 2001 after a popular revolt toppled President Joseph Estrada. She was his vice president at the time. In 2004, she was returned to office in an election marred by accusations of fraud, which she denied.

Her opponents immediately denounced her latest move and linked it to longstanding speculation that she wanted to remain in public office to maintain her immunity from prosecution and ward off investigations of her presidency.

“With a rule that has been characterized by shameless corruption and impunity, Arroyo is no longer morally qualified to hold any public office,” said Renato Reyes, secretary general of Bayan, the country’s largest leftist group. “Her attempt to get a congressional seat is not born out of a desire to serve but by a desire to get political leverage and avoid accountability for the many crimes committed by her regime.”

She will run in her home district in Pampanga Province, just north of Manila, her lawyer said in a briefing on Monday. Her son Juan Miguel Arroyo, a congressman who represents the district, has said he would step aside if she chose to run.

Under the law, a president cannot seek re-election, although Mr. Estrada is challenging that ban and filed candidacy papers on Monday for the presidency. No president has run for lower public office.

Mrs. Arroyo’s political opponents and critics have long suggested that she will run for Congress and then use her political clout to initiate a shift in the system of government from the present republican form to a parliamentary form in which she could become prime minister.

This course, they said, would allow her to head off lawsuits her opponents have promised to file against her after she leaves the presidency.

In her radio message, Mrs. Arroyo tried to brush aside the debate over her intentions. Calling the issue “so hypothetical,” she said: “I won’t even bother to speculate about it.”

But she did offer an acknowledgment of her critics, noting that “Congressional immunity is only from libel suits and utterances made in Congress.”