On November 23, 2009, 58 people were murdered by a local warlord from Maguindanao in the worst case of election violence in Philippine history. Police have charged members of members of the powerful and wealthy Ampatuan clan for the murder of the 58, who were in a convoy to the local election office to file the candidacy papers of a challenger to the incumbent political family.

Among the victims were 32 journalists, mostly from Central Mindanao. The incident marks the largest number of journalists killed in a single incident in the world, making the Philippines the most dangerous place for journalists in 2009. A year later, hope still flickers for the families of the victims, but the path to justice has been unbearably slow. Produced by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism for the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists.

Writer/Reporter/Producer: Ed Lingao
Videographers: Rhoneil Amores and Ed Lingao

By all indications, Agra is not least aggravated by the criticisms. Yesterday, at the flag ceremony of the Justice department personnel, he declared: “I stand by that decision and the process I went through to arrive at it… I bow neither to political dictates nor to public opinion.”

He admits to being a crybaby but says won’t quit his post. “’Di po ako magbibitiw sa aking posisyon, Wala akong balak atrasan ang mga hamon sa aking opisina….matibay si Al Agra kahit iyakin.”

Ateneo Law School batch 1990. Acting DOJ Secretary Alberto Agra was supposed to graduate in 1989, but was delayed by a year after failing a class wherein he was caught cheating. Source: Ateneo Law School Yearbook (1990), Ateneo de Manila University. Photo by Katreena Cosme and Beatriz Bermundo.

But then this isn’t the first time Agra has had to endure the ire of his fellow men of justice, and closest buddies in law school.

Two decades ago, one of his professors at the Ateneo de Manila Law School also got infuriated after discovering that Agra and six of his friends had exactly the same wrong answers in an exam – down to the decimal points. To their teacher, that was hint enough that the students had cheated.

“It was a scandal at the time,” says an Ateneo staffer privy to the incident but who declines to be named. “There were about 100 students who took the exam. Agra and his classmates were accused of cheating by their professor who had them investigated.”

The case reached the dean’s office and went all the way up to the office of the university president, says the staffer.

Agra won’t reply

Over the last five days, the PCIJ had tried to get Agra’s side of the issue. Last Thursday he told the PCIJ over the phone that he prefers a face-to-face interview early this week.

On Friday, via a text message, the PCIJ requested him to fix the date, time and venue of the interview. The PCIJ called again.  Agra said he had changed his mind about the face-to-face interview and would now prefer to answer questions via email, with a promise to send his reply by Sunday. The PCIJ sent a reminder text yesterday, and Agra texted back, “will email later today.” At the close of office hours 5 p.m. Monday, Agra had not done so.

Two other Ateneo personnel interviewed separately by PCIJ corroborate the staffer’s story. They also say it was the final exam in the Law of Wills and Succession subject under then professor Avelino Sebastian Jr.

Sebastian, who has retired from teaching at the Ateneo, in a recent phone interview with the PCIJ neither confirmed nor denied that Agra was among those he had found cheating in his class.

Nonetheless, according to one of the Ateneo personnel, the incident happened in 1988 when Agra was on his third year in law school. As a result, Agra had to retake the class, which meant he could not graduate with the rest of his batch. Originally belonging to Batch ’89, he graduated in 1990 and passed the bar the following year.

But Agra would redeem himself from his rather unpleasant academic past, establishing himself early in his career as a defender of the defenseless. Unfortunately, say his present critics, he later moved to the other side of the fence and became a defender of a highly unpopular but impeachment-proof president.

In the late 1980s, though, the then young lawyer was earning praise from activists for, among other things, helping found and later heading the nongovernment Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal (Saligan).

Saligan is an Ateneo-based alternative lawyers’ groups catering to the needs of the poor and marginalized sectors of society.

Do-gooder gone bad?

“He was respected as one of the founders of Saligan,” says lawyer Marlon Manuel who had worked with Agra as a law student-intern and later replaced the latter as Saligan’s executive director after 1994. “He was very committed in his work. As an alternative lawyer, he worked for social justice and human rights. Everybody in our group looked up to him.”

Efficient s’ya talaga,” says Saligan lawyer Raissa Jajurie, who began working with Agra when she was still a law student in 1989. “While driving his car he would have a notepad with him, jotting down things that he didn’t want to forget. Kumbaga sa karpintero, he was the one who built the house.”

Jajurie adds, “He jumpstarted the operations of the organization. I would like to think that he was sincere in founding Saligan.”

Former education secretary and Liberal Party (LP) general campaign manager Florencio ‘Butch’ Abad, who is also among Saligan’s founders, describes the young Agra as “one of the idealistic lawyers that we had.”

“He worked pro bono for poor people who could not afford legal expenses for their cases,” says Abad.

But while labor law was one of Agra’s early interests, he would branch out to local governance and election laws. These led him to dealing with influential politicians who sought lawyers specializing in these legal fields. Eventually, Agra would wind up doing what his colleagues in alternative lawyering would consider highly objectionable.

During the Estrada administration, Agra got involved in local governance work and had then San Juan City Mayor Jose ‘Jinggoy’ Estrada, who was also national president of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines, as his client.

In 2004, Agra became the election lawyer of the K-4 coalition made up of the then ruling party Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats, Liberal Party, Nationalist People’s Coalition, and the Nacionalista Party. The coalition pushed for the presidential candidacy of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who by then had occupied Malacanang for three years.

Many doubted Arroyo’s 2004 poll victory because of lingering allegations of widespread fraud as a result of the highly-publicized ‘Hello, Garci’ wiretapping scandal in 2005.

Switched to Gloria side

Subsequent events would finally bring Agra to Arroyo’s turf.

Following then LP president Franklin Drilon’s 2005 call for Arroyo to resign over allegations of massive cheating in the 2004 polls, a faction of the party led by Arroyo’s ally, Lito Atienza, broke away from Drilon’s group and elected Atienza as the faction’s new president.

The Drilon and Atienza factions became locked up in a legal battle that began at the Commission on Elections and ended up at the Supreme Court. In March 2006, Agra agreed to become the legal counsel of Drilon’s group. Yet after a few days, Agra withdrew from the case without explaining his decision, according to Drilon’s camp.

“I remember (Agra) telling us that he had decided to help us dahil prinsipyo na ang pinag-uusapan dito (because we are talking about principle here),” says LP Director General Jose Luis Martin ‘Chito’ Gascon. “We filed the case at the Comelec on March 3, Friday, then he withdrew Monday. GMA (Arroyo) got to him over the weekend.”

While Agra supposedly kept mum about his reasons for leaving Drilon’s group, some of those privy to what had happened believe his decision had something to do with his then 14-year-old daughter, who at the time was already a globetrotting champion tennis player.

“He (Agra) is a family man,” says a politician. “His life revolves around his daughter. I think he was afraid that his daughter who was then getting some support or scholarship from the government would be affected if (he did not) withdraw from defending Drilon’s LP.”

Another politician seconds this, saying, “He really wanted his daughter to excel. He was afraid that his daughter might lose support if he goes against the government.”

Tennis fanatic, too

Agra is a known tennis fanatic who fully supports his daughter’s dream of becoming a world-class athlete.

“We look at this as a family project which requires a commitment from each and every one of us. We talk regularly, and assess (my daughter’s) progress on a regular basis,” Agra told writer Stephanie Coyiuto of The Philippine Star in August 2006, when asked about how he was supporting his daughter’s tennis career.

Agra is president of the Futures Tennis Scholarship Foundation, Inc. that was established in June 2001, documents obtained by the PCIJ from the Securities and Exchange Commission showed.

Agra’s wife, Evangeline L. Agra is the foundation’s treasurer. The other officers and trustees are Liza S. Go; Luisito L. Hipolito; Victoriano Z. Naluz Jr; Domingo S. Feliciano; and Remegio P. Flores.

The foundation holds office at the Medical Plaza in San Miguel Avenue, Pasig City.

In its 2001 to 2003 progress report, the foundation said its goal is “to promote the development of the sport of tennis by providing assistance and support to its beneficiaries particularly outstanding junior tennis players.”

It also “provides assistance to underprivileged, deserving and promising tennis players as well as extend support to coaches and tennis professionals” and “undertakes programs and projects for grassroots development and formation of players for international competition.”

The foundation’s financial statements showed that from 2002 to 2006, its “cash donation and contribution income” amounted to P5.88 million, including  P1,141,596.66 in 2002; P1,444,517.40 in 2003; P2,111,475.94 in 2004; P690,000 in 2005; and P489,250 in 2006.

Donors galore

Among the corporate donors listed in the foundation’s 2001 to 2003 progress report were the government-controlled Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation; the International Container Terminal Services, Inc . of Arroyo ally Enrique Razon Jr.; the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company; Smart Communications; and San Miguel Corporation.

The foundation has launched “special projects and entered into partnership arrangements with corporate sponsors,” according to the organization’s progress report.

Among these was a Memorandum of Agreement with Mandaluyong City that provided the foundation with funds “sourced from the Philippine Development Assistance Fund earmarked by the Office of Senator Francis N. Pangilinan.”

In July 2006, Agra’s daughter won the International Junior Champ prize in the Girls Double Event Tennis Competition in Egypt. The following month, she paid Arroyo a courtesy call in Malacañang.

By then, Agra was serving as Arroyo’s lawyer during the impeachment proceedings at the House of Representatives. In the same year, Agra also stood as legal counsel of Sigaw ng Bayan, a group identified with the administration that led the call for Charter change (Cha-cha) through a people’s initiative and took their petition to the Supreme Court.

Manuel, then among the lawyers opposing Cha-cha, recalls that during the oral argument at the Supreme Court, he found his group and Agra on opposite sides.

“I remember Butch (Abad) jokingly telling Al before the hearing at the Supreme Court that he should sit with us and not at the opposite side,” says Manuel.

Conflict of interest

In March 2007, Arroyo appointed Agra as head of the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel, and then later as chief regulator of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, a post that he relinquished in June 2008 due to allegations of conflict of interest.

Agra's entry in the Ateneo Law School batch 1990 yearbook. Source: Ateneo Law School Yearbook (1990), Ateneo de Manila University. Photo by Katreena Cosme and Beatriz Bermundo.

Since 1993, Agra has served as a professor at the Ateneo Law School handling classes on the 1991 Local Government Code, Law on Public/Government Corporations, Administrative Law, and Law on Public Officers.

In January 2010, Agra assumed the post of solicitor general and became concurrent acting justice secretary last March.

Sitting on an interim basis in the eight-man Judicial and Bar Council, Agra was the body’s only member who did not support its opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling that allows Arroyo to appoint a new chief justice despite the ban on midnight appointments during her final three months in office.

Agra even filed a separate comment that asked the high tribunal to fill up all vacancies in the judiciary during her final months in Malacañang.

Only this month, Manuel’s Alternative Law Groups, a coalition of 20 alternative lawyers’ organizations and which Agra also helped organize, sought the acting justice secretary’s inhibition from the JBC’s deliberations on the nominees for the next chief justice.

Manuel says that Agra’s participation would compromise the JBC’s independence because as solicitor general, Agra has also consistently defended the government’s position on Arroyo’s authority to appoint a new chief justice.

Also, this month, Agra issued a resolution exonerating suspended Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao governor Zaldy Ampatuan and Mamasapano, Maguindanao mayor Akmad Ampatuan Sr. of their involvement in the November 23, 2009 killings of 57 people in Maguindanao.

Agra’s resolution triggered protests not only among families of the victims of the Maguindanao massacre, but also among state prosecutors, who are now asking their superior to “revisit” his resolution.

“Otherwise, we dishonor the primary reason for which our institution exists and its very name: the Department of Justice,” says Chief State Prosecutor Claro Arellano.

Disappointed friends

Meanwhile, his former Saligan colleagues can’t help but get disappointed with the acts and pronouncements of someone who was once their mentor.

“I don’t have any ideas about what had happened to him,” says Manuel. “He used to be one of us.”

“I feel sad and perplexed,” says Jajurie. “Four months na lang siya sa posisyon niya, di naman siya magtutuloy beyond June 2010 (He will only be at his post for four months; he won’t be there beyond June 2010). Why did he have to do that?”

Yet those who see Agra as being a “fall guy” of sorts in his decision to exonerate two of the Ampatuans in the massacre discern a similarity with the role he ended up playing in the law school exam scandal.

While all seven friends were accused of cheating, it was only Agra who bore the brunt of the group’s supposed wrongdoing.

“Sa totoo lang, nakakaawa si Agra (The truth is, Agra was pitiful),” says one of the Ateneo personnel interviewed by PCIJ. “All of them cheated but it was only Agra who admitted the wrongdoing. Because he had no influence at the time, he became the sacrificial lamb.”

The Ateneo insider says that most, if not all, of Agra’s six friends who were absolved of cheating, had money or influence or both, which got them off the hook. One was even a senator’s son.

Agra, himself from a relatively well-off family, actually didn’t voluntarily admit that he was guilty of cheating, says the insider.

“There were just two of them left who were then still being investigated,” recounts the Ateneo staffer. “There (had to) be someone penalized (for the cheating) or else the school’s disciplinary system would collapse or it would look like it was the professor who accused them who was the real problem.”

“Thus the two were told that one of them must admit to cheating or both of them will fail,” says the staffer. “It was only Agra who admitted to cheating, thus he flunked the subject.” – PCIJ, April 2010

Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Governor Roan Libarios said Agra’s order to clear former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan and his uncle, former Maguindanao Vice Governor Akmad Ampatuan of the murder charges was  “highly irregular” and ran counter to normal court procedures.

In clearing the two Ampatuans, Libarios said Agra had effectively overruled his own prosecution panel, and overturned the initial findings of the courts that there was probable cause to charge the two. Six members of the Ampatuan clan, including patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., had been charged for the murder of 57 people in Ampatuan town last year. Among the victims were 32 members of the media who were covering the filing of the certificate of candidacy of the elder Ampatuan’s political rival.

“Dapat pinabayaan na lang ni Secretary Agra yung decision ng prosecution team at ni Judge [Jocelyn] Solis-Reyes na ipagpatuloy yung kaso,” Libarios said. Libarios and IBP general counsel Atty. Rodolfo Urbiztondo had joined other lawyers and media groups in denouncing Agra’s move in a press conference held Monday, April 19.

Libarios clarified that Agra’s resolution was not yet final and executory and that the final decision still lies with Regional Trial Court Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes.  The lady judge, lauded for her no-nonsense and brave demeanor, last month rejected moves by defense lawyers to have her inhibit herself from the case on the grounds of being biased against their client, Datu Unsay Mayor Datu Andal Ampatuan Jr.

On Monday, members of the prosecution panel led by Chief State Prosecutor Claro Arellano staged a walkout after publicly questioning Agra’s order. Agra’s decision was release on the evening of April 16, a Friday, just as the accused Ampatuans were transferred to Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig from their detention cells in Mindanao.  The team had earned the respect and support of private lawyers representing the kin of journalists killed in Maguindanao that has now resulted in an ‘open war’ at the justice department.

The panel of public prosecutors had been getting some flak from other lawyers, observers and even the media covering the bail hearings for their alleged lack of competence and skill in handling the controversial case.  While Agra has been quoted as saying he will not replace the team as punishment for openly opposing his order, it remains to be seen how the crisis will play out since the prosecutors indicated they are may not file a motion before the judge to clear Governor Zaldy and Akmad Ampatuan of the murder complaint.

Attorney Harry Roque of Center Law Philippines noted that Agra had served as one of the lawyers of First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo in several libel suits filed against members of the media.

Media organizations also joined hands in condemning Agra’s order. Among those represented in Monday’s press conference were ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and BusinessWorld.

Rowena Paraan of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines joined the Philippine National Police and the Defense Press Corps in calling for the resignation of Agra.

Paraan also scored the presidential aspirants for their slow reaction to this major development in the case, noting that news of Agra’s order had been reported in the media as early as Friday. She said it was curious that hardly any presidential candidate had been discussing the issue even though it was an election season.

While Paraan acknowledged that this woud be a long court battle, she said the families of the victims should not just peg their hopes on the next president. “I don’t think we should rely on who’s going to be president to get justice for this case and for any other case of killings.”

Several aspirants had somewhat belatedly come out with statements denouncing the move of the DOJ on Monday afternoon, with LP standard-bearer Noynoy Aquino expressing ‘disappointment’, while Nacionalista Party presidential bet Manny Villar called for a ‘review’ of the case.  Villar’s Vice Presidential candidate Loren Legarda, for her part, claimed she burst into tears upon hearing this development.

Paraan added that there have been increasing reports of persons offering to pay-off journalists or families of the victims to make them back off from the court case.

Media groups denounce decision of Justice Secretary Alberto Agra to drop the murder charges against Zaldy and Akmad Ampatuan in connection with the Maguindanao Massacre.

Since 2002, the state auditing agency, in various reports, has repeatedly raised adverse findings about the lack of transparency, inadequate documentation of expenses, disallowed or irregular or unliquidated disbursements, and mismatched or irreconcilable entries in bank balances and financial reports of ARMM and Maguindanao, as well as unverified or unavailable physical inventory of equipment and properties supposedly purchased with public funds there.

Again and again, COA has also pointed to huge expenses for what could have been identical or the same projects in a region that is mostly under the control of the influential and wealthy Ampatuan family.

In gist, the COA reports altogether paint a sorry picture of how one powerful clan could have dipped into public coffers, willfully and wantonly, as if these were its personal purse.

That national government agencies knew this was happening but for the longest time turned a blind eye to it is the tragedy of Maguindanao and the ARMM.

This much is clear, according to Jesuit priest Father Albert Alejo, convenor of Konsult Mindanaw: “The funding agencies know about it, because part of their money subsidizes warlordism. The IRA (internal revenue allotment) goes into lining the pockets of some of these important people.”

Poor despite billions

At the very least, it may help explain the how a single clan has managed to grow its wealth even as the area it controls became poorer.

Indeed, Maguindanao, the traditional stronghold of the Ampatuans, remains among the top five poorest provinces in the country despite the billions of pesos poured into it – and into ARMM – by the Arroyo government.

In fact, without such financial propping, Maguindanao’s population of 1.27 million would have had to make do only with annual local tax collection that was recorded at only P555,864 in 2002, and even declined to P204,292 in 2008.

The largest of the five provinces of ARMM in terms of number of voters, Maguindanao is the key to political control of the region. This is largely why it was the object of much pampering from the national government in terms of its IRA, say political analysts.

In 2002, the province’s IRA stood at P460.84 million. This peaked at P610.5 million in 2006, and slipped to PP525.5 million in 2008, excluding the allocations for its 36 towns and 506 barangays. Maguindanao, though, recorded “other receipts” of P391 million in 2007, from various other lump-sum funds in the national budget.

In 2009, Maguindanao and its towns and barangays received P3.42 billion in IRA, including P1.08 billion for the province, P1.73 billion for its 36 towns, and P616.57 million for its 506 barangays.

For 2010, Maguindanao’s total IRA even rose to P3.56 billion, including P1.03 billion for the province, P1.83 billion for its towns, and P656 million for its barangays.

Apart from the billions allotted to Maguindanao, the Arroyo government has been quaintly generous to ARMM, which in 2008 alone received P16.96 billion in total cash inflows, including P8.82 billion from the national government and P7.7 billion for its own budget.

For 2010, ARMM secured total new appropriations of P9.26 billion, including P8.18 billion for operations, and another P1 billion for locally funded projects.

But even a cursory review of the data enrolled in COA reports through the years strongly indicates that few residents of ARMM – and especially Maguindanao – ever benefited from these public monies.

Suppliers, employees

For Maguindanao in 2008, the COA said that of the P1.087-billion total cash inflows. P354.6 million went to “suppliers/creditors,” and P157.03 million to “employees.” The provincial government listed unspecified “other cash outflows” to be worth P455.56 million, or nearly half its total cash inflow for the year.

The picture repeated the cash outflow pattern of the province in 2007 – P228.38 million for “suppliers/creditors,” P162.7 million for “employees,” and P336.4 million for “other cash outflows.”

For ARMM in 2008 the regional government reported total cash inflow of P17.26 billion, but carved out of this P5.77 billion for “personal services” and P10.56 billion for “maintenance and other operating expenses.”

The big cash inflows were enrolled under specific agencies: P1.07 billion for the office of the regional governor, P4.7 billion for the Department of Education, P1.4 billion for the Department of Public Works, P550 million for the Department of Health, P329 million for the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, and P208 million for the Department of Agrarian Reform, and P22 million for the Department of Transportation and Communication.

On which expenditure items these amounts were used up is another story altogether.

In the observation of SocialWatch Convenor and former national treasurer Leonor Magtolis-Briones, the bulk of the funds went to paying mostly salaries, wages, honoraria, and similar expenses.

Sustaining the operations – largely payroll – of a small agency like the ARMM, she rues, amounts to “an incredible P1 billion, even though the presence of the regional government is barely felt.” Maguindanao is a bad example, Briones says, of how political control begets fiscal control, and vice versa.

In truth, in 2008, the payroll for the regular and other employees of the ARMM had climbed to P3.7 billion. (This amount excludes another P103 million that Maguindanao paid in 2008 for salaries and wages for regular, casual and contractual employees, and more for other allowances and bonuses.)

COA’s 2008 report on the ARMM lists the following amounts incurred for nearly identical “personal services” items: P3.7 billion for regular pay employees; P25 million for casual employees; P166 million for contractual employees; P103 million for “cash gift,” P267 million for “yearend bonus,” P48 million for productivity incentive, P55 million for “other personnel benefits,” P96.3 million for clothing/uniform allowance, and P202 million for “other bonuses/allowances,” among others.

Yet in addition, the ARMM government billed on public funds all sorts of other expenses, including P74.8 million for “agricultural expenses,” P42.9 million for local travel, P38.27 million for “training,” P89.29 million for “office supplies,” P23.8 million for “other supplies expenses,” P16 million for “other professional services,” P12.9 million for drugs and medicines, P25.8 million for “scholarship,” P15.5 million for electricity service, P15 million for gasoline, oil and lubricant expenses, P4.8 million for “rent expenses,” P6.5 million for landline telephone service, P1.2 million for mobile telephone service, P4.5 million for “security expenses,” P2.1 million for “general services,” P1.8 million for water service, P700,000 for janitorial services, and P507,000 for Internet service.

Multiple variants

These multiple permutations of “personal services” expenditures also dominated the budget of Maguindanao. Also in 2008, the province said it incurred the following expenses: P73 million for salaries and wages of regular employees; P10 million for casual employees; P19 million for contractul employees; P10.7 million for “other personnel benefits;” P10 million for travelling expenses; P25 million for training expenses; a huge P61.5 million for “food supplies expenses;” P53 million for gasoline, oil, lubricants; P34 million for agricultural supplies expenses; P17 million for “other supplies expenses,” and so on and so forth.

Dozens of identical expense items were both enrolled in the accounts of both the provincial government of Maguindanao and the ARMM regional government. In both cases, these were all assigned separate but similarly huge budgets.

Ironically, for all those billions, the ARMM government is in default of paying contributions to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) of its teachers in the staggering amount of P363.9 million. It has also failed to remit P5.9 million in GSIS contributions of its labor department employees, and P1.3 million of its environment department employees.

A special COA report on ARMM’s education department covering the period 2002 to 2005 noted that, “for CYs (calendar years) 2002 to 2004 alone, the DepEd failed to remit to GSIS deductions from employees’ salaries representing loan repayments amounting to P233,945,228.30 and government share of P118,344,279.60.”
However, the COA continued, “despite non-remittance, the funds intended for the purpose were no longer available as the PS bank accounts reflect minimal balances of P57,411.80 and P10,726.81 as of December 31, 2004.”

To be sure, COA has not been wanting in its reminders to the ARMM executives. In 2008, it listed a total of P171 million in various “disallowances/charges” and has repeatedly asked regional officials to settle millions of pesos in amounts “prepaid” for travel, training and other activities.

Too, COA has reminded officials in ARMM and Maguindanao about the lack of pre-bid, bid and other documents before the rollout of public works projects, for which mostly billing documents have been submitted.

In 2007, as public works and other projects started to flood the province, COA raised a big concern: because the provincial government had failed to submit its Annual Investment Plan ahead of construction work, there was no way for state auditors to ascertain the relevance or timeliness of such projects.

Total control

Notably, in the last several years, Ampatuan relatives, as well as other political surrogates, began to be found everywhere in local government units in ARMM, both in elective and appointive. As a result, the clan assumed nearly total control of public monies of all levels of the government – from regional to provincial, municipal and barangay levels.

Strategic posts in budget and revenue agencies were made accessible only to the most trusted kith or kin, not least of them Rebecca Uy Ampatuan.

The eldest child of Ampatuan Sr. and Laila Uy, Andal’s first wife. Rebecca worked as administration and finance chief of ARMM’s Regional Legislative Assembly. Previously, she was the chief of staff of then governor Zaldy Ampatuan, her younger brother.

Rebecca is the wife of Akmad ‘Tato’ Ampatuan, who was elected in 2007 as mayor of Mamasapano. In early 2009, Tato was appointed by Zaldy as OIC vice governor of Maguindanao.

Interestingly, while it is typically booked as the agency getting the lion’s share of public funds, the education department is possibly the least favored in terms of actual program priorities of the Ampatuans.

The lists of assets of the provincial and regional governments keel heavily toward grand, expensive edifices built for purposes other than education.

In Maguindanao, the local government enrolled among its assets the 2008 COA report: P1.16 million in school buildings; P20 million in office equipment; P20.8 million in motor vehicles; P106 million in construction and heavy equipment; P175 million in office buildings; P5.1 million in machineries, and P1.44 million in electrical and energy structures.

In addition, the provincial government reported that it had an array of “construction in progress” projects among its other assets, notably P110 million in “roads and highways” and P119.16 million in “other public infrastructures.”

An edifice complex seems to tie in the Ampatuans together as a clan. In ARMM, the regional government reported as many, and seemingly similar, construction projects. These included, based on the 2008 COA report: P134 million in roads and highways, P21 million in other “agency assets,” P15.7 million in lighthouses and harbors, and P1.45 million for “parks/plaza.”

Education neglected

Yet it is in the education and health sectors where the poor of Maguindanao and ARMM need a lot more propping up by local and national government agencies.

In Maguindanao, the enrollment ratio for children of school age is just 70 percent, among the lowest across the nation. In 2003 to 2004, government data showed that half or 984 out of the 1,959 public elementary schools in the ARMM were incomplete or not fully constructed.

The data on provisions made for the education sector are at best fudged, at worst, fictional. In schoolyear 2005-06, Maguindanao reported that it had enrolled a total of 135,990 students in elementary school. But a 2008 PCIJ reported showed that the schools counted only 50,204 usable seats for the students, for a dismal shortage of 85,786 seats.

Enrollment in secondary schools is even worse at only 32.8 percent as of 2006, or just a third of the children of high-school age. Too, a mere 13 percent of those who make it to high school manage to graduate.

It is not surprising then that in 2005, the Philippine Human Development Report said that only 39.7 percent of adults in Maguindanao have six years of basic education, compared to the national average of 84 percent.

For those in school, the critical shortage of books is yet another problem. Maguindanao’s schools have a total of only 30,952 textbooks for Math, 34,039 for English, 28,810 for Filipino, and 25,697 for Science.

Even worse than the lack of textbooks is the appalling lack of teachers. Maguindanao’s education department in 2008 said that the province’s elementary and high schools have a total of 1,340 permanent teachers and 52 contractual teachers.

That comes up to a most pathetic average of two — at most three — teachers for each of Maguindanao’s 506 barangays. And these are teachers whose GSIS contributions have not been paid on time by a clan whose young now go elsewhere to study.

Other, bigger ills plague the education sector in ARMM, according to COA – ghost teachers, teaching positions for sale, absentee teachers, and even ghost schools. But how the Ampatuans squandered billions of pesos in public funds, with their political patrons in Manila looking the other way, is perhaps the most ghastly scourge ever visited upon the poor of Maguindanao and ARMM. – With additional reporting by Ed Lingao and Jaileen F. Jimeno, PCIJ, March 2010

Nowadays, members of the Ampatuan clan still go around with armed bodyguards. But they seem to prefer wheels to horses, and apparently in multiples at that. According to the records of the Land Transportation Office (LTO), the Ampatuans could have as many as 121 various vehicles, including at least 53 top-of-line luxury rides that are the latest of their kind.

The Ampatuans’ fleet is sure to mock even those of the wealthiest tycoons. Among the collection are three Hummers, three Land Rovers, three Land Cruisers, two Chevrolet Suburbans, four Isuzu D-Max, two Ford F-150s, nine Toyota Hi-Luxes, two Toyota Grandias, one Camry, one Strada,   one Willy’s Jeep, one pink recreation van, 18 Isuzu trucks, three armored vehicles, and a Humvee military vehicle, among others. They also have at least four McCormick farm tractors, four Kubota tractors, and three Massey-Ferguson farm tractors.

The clan’s vehicles include 26 registered in the name of Andal Sr; five registered in the name of his first wife, Bai Laila Uy Ampatuan; two registered in the name of Zaldy; and 17 other vehicles registered in the name of Zaldy’s wife, Bai Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan. But for more than half of the vehicles, many of which were parked at the warehouse of Andal Sr.’s mansion in Maguindanao last December, the LTO has no records at all.

A three-page document that is part of a report submitted recently to the Office of the Ombudsman meanwhile lists vehicles said to belong to Andal Sr. and his son, suspended ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan “with registration papers from Land Transportation Office.”

The vehicles said to be Andal Sr.’s are:
1. Toyota Hi-Ace Grandia  LGL 233
2. Toyota Hilux LGK 539
3. Ford Super Crew GOB 111
4. Toyota Hilux LGK 419
5. Toyota Hilux LFZ134
6. Toyota Hilux LFR 169
7. Toyota Fortuner LUA 11* (in the name of Bai Laila Uy Ampatuan)
8. Honda Motorcycle 4068 LB * (in the name of Bai Laila Uy Ampatuan)
9. Honda Motorcycle 4082 LB* (in the name of Bai Laila Uy Ampatuan)
10. Toyota HiAce Grandia LGC 612* (in the name of Bai Laila Uy Ampatuan)
11. Toyota Hilux LFD 371
12. Toyota Hilux LGK 812
13. Toyota Hilux 112-00000171839
14. Fort F150 pick-up GUV111
15. Ford F-150 pickup ATT 111
16. Isuzu Elf Dropside MBY 802
17. Toyota Camry 3.5Q A/T ZJU 477
18. Toyota Land Cruiser MCY 818
19. Ford F-150 pick-up MDJ 651
20. Toyota Hilux LGK 419
21. Isuzu Tractor Head MCR 508
22. Isuzu Tractor Head MCU 997
23. Trailer CUP 924
24. Trailer 2TMP09
25. Trailer 3TMP09
26. Isuzu Tractor Head MCS 388
27. Nissan Patrol ASA 888
28. Isuzu Truck Aluminum Wing Van RCP 519
29. Chevrolet Wagon ZGM 695
30. Isuzu Forward Dropside 4TMP09

Those said to be Zaldy Ampatuan’s but of which only two are actually in his name are:

1. Ford Expedition LEF 587
2. Isuzu Alterra LFW 366* (In the name of Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
3. Toyota Innova  LFX 935*(In the name of Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
4. Toyota Land Cruiser LGG 927*(In the name of Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
5. Toyota Hilux LFN 612*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
6. Toyota HiAce Grandia LFW 106*(In the name of Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
7. Mitsubishi Adventure LFR 743*(In the name of Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
8. Toyota Land Cruiser LFR 775*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
9. Toyota HiAce Grandia LGC 387* (In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
10. Toyota Hilux LFJ 609*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
11. Mitsubishi Pajero DZN 168*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
12. Mitsubishi Pajero1112-00000240796
13. Isuzu Dmax LGB 447*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
14. Nissan Patrol LFB 662*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
15. Honda Civic LEU 836 *(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
16. Toyota Revo LER 352*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
17. Ford Chateau Wagon ZUA 777*(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
18. Mitsubishi Strada 112-00000167562 *(In the name of  Johaira “Bongbong” Midtimbang Ampatuan)
19. Land Cruiser JSM 168

According to the document, the Toyota Hilux with plate number LFN 612 was “recently sold to Theresa E. Lomantas as evidenced by the Deed of Sale dated December 14, 2009, executed by Bong M. Ampatuan and Theresa E. Lomantas.”

Its second and third pages list 68 other vehicles, including trucks and tractors, and “assorted farm equipment.” Of this figure, five are already included in the lists of Andal Sr. and Zaldy, while seven bear government plates (police patrol vehicles and a Humvee),

Of the remaining 56 vehicles, three are owned by the Ampatuans: Mitsubishi Strada LFZ 541 is registered in the name of  Soraida B. Ampatuan, widow of Saudi Ampatuan; a Toyota Hilux LGA 605 in the name of Andal Jr.; a Suburban Chevrolet with plated number GOV 888, which is not registered in Davao City but appears to be owned by Bai Zandria Sinsuat-Ampatuan, wife of Andal Sr.’s youngest son, Sajid;

As for the rest, a Toyota Grandia LGG 237 is registered in the name of Michael A. Sulaik; a Toyota Hilux LGM 664 in the name of Joemar Ayunan Olimpayan; and a green truck LFP  195 in the name of Kuzberi Lumenda Ampatuan.

That leaves some 50 that are unaccounted for. Eastern Mindanao Command chief Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer says that based on his queries some Ampatuan vehicles are registered in the name of the family drivers.  – With additional reporting by Ed Lingao,  PCIJ, March 2010

IN THE nation’s third poorest province, Maguindanao, the poverty incidence is a staggering 62 percent – five of every six residents live on less than a dollar a day. And by all indications, every single sixth resident who is not poor could be an Ampatuan by blood or affinity.

But in the midst of all that poverty, Maguindanao and the Ampatuans have always been awash in cash, not so much because of any economic activity of note, except for agriculture and occasional kidnap-for-ransom episodes in the area.

The cash came nearly entirely from Manila, courtesy of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has pampered the province and the clan as if they were her spoiled twins.

In her nine years in power, President Arroyo has poured billions of pesos into the province in internal revenue allotment (IRA), public works budget, and other lump-sum funds. After all, she has nurtured a deep friendship with the Ampatuans, who delivered landslide victory margins for her and her senatorial candidates in the 2004 and 2007 elections.

In fact, minutes after casting his ballot in the 2007 polls, Datu Zaldy Ampatuan, then governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), had with clairvoyant aplomb guaranteed a 12-0 victory for Arroyo’s senatorial slate.

“Actually,” he said, “Maguindanao province is an extension of the home province of Her Excellency, PGMA (President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), which is Pampanga. Here in Maguindanao, considering that we have 20 mayors unopposed, these 20 mayors are allies of the administration, even those areas with opponents – Pagalungan and Talitay – the opponents are all allies of the administration.”

Arroyo’s lieutenants

The Ampatuans were Arroyo’s anointed lieutenants in ARMM, their alliance built largely on largesse. To be fair, that was pretty much the same picture for two former ARMM governors: Zacaria Candao, who served during parts of the Aquino and Ramos administrations (1990 to 1993); and Nur Misuari, who served during the Ramos and Estrada regimes, but was more identified with the former.

The cash bonanza that Maguindanao and ARMM secured from Arroyo, however, has dismally failed to prop the province’s poor. Instead, its poverty numbers have grown on parallel track with the surge in the wealth of the Ampatuans, a clan given to flaunting its wealth, weapons, and wheels.

The irony is not lost on the likes of SocialWatch convenor and University of the Philippines professor Leonor Magtolis-Briones.

Comments the former national treasurer: “Magtatanong ka, saan napunta ang pera ng national government. Hindi mo naman nakikita sa sitwasyon ng tao, kulang ang mga duktor, kulang ang edukasyon, kulang ang tubig, hindi natatapos sa pag-aaral, tapos, nakikita mo ang mga bahay (ng Ampatuan) na malalaki. (You’d ask, where did all that money from national government go? You don’t see it in the situation of the people, they need doctors, they are poorly schooled, they don’t have water, they don’t finish school, and yet the houses of the Ampatuans are so grand.)”

Briones cites government data showing that only three in every 10 residents in Maguindanao have finished Grade 6, and only five percent – or just 63,500 of the 1.27 million total populace – have access to potable water. There are only 18 public health doctors in the province, she says, or one for every 70,555 people.

And yet, Briones says, in 2009, Maguindanao secured IRAs worth P3.42 billion, including P1.08 billion for the province, P1.73 billion for its towns, and P616.57 million for its barangays. This rose even more to P3.56 billion in 2010, including a slightly lower P1.078 billion for the province, P1.83 billion for its towns, and P656.97 million for its barangays.

The amount does not yet include the multimillion-peso earmarks or Philippine Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) for local congressmen that includes Rep Simeon Datumanong, an Ampatuan ally who had served as Arroyo’s public works secretary, as well as a Cabinet member of her late father, former President Diosdado Macapagal.

Richest in votes

With 470,021 registered voters as of March 2009, Maguindanao tops the five-province ARMM as the richest in votes.

Arroyo, though, has been as generous with budget outlays for ARMM that Zaldy Ampatuan led as governor until he was suspended last December, when he was charged for rebellion. Zaldy would later also be implicated, along with 11 of his relatives, in the Maguindanao massacre of 58 people.

For 2010 alone, the total new appropriations for ARMM was P9.26 billion, including P8.18 billion for operations, P1 billion for locally-funded projects, P952.5 million for general administration and support, and P78 million for foreign-assisted projects.

But it is Maguindanao in particular that has turned into a development black hole, and the steady growth in the wealth of the Ampatuans, a deep, dark mystery.

For sure the source of wealth for those like Mindanao’s richest governors Rodolfo del Rosario (Davao del Norte) and Jose Ma. Zubiri (Bukidnon) is far easier to trace.

Del Rosario and Zubiri have vast plantations of banana and sugar, respectively, and both have shares of stocks in various businesses.

Rebecca Ampatuan-Ampatuan, eldest daughter of clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., has also said that her family has “vast landholdings,” but only parcels of these have been declared in the Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALNs) filed by various members of the clan who have held public office.

IRA behind wealth?

Moreover, the Ampatuans’ friends and critics alike point to what they say is a likelier source of the clan’s wealth, with several of them remarking when asked about this: “Tinatanong pa ba ’yan (Is that even asked)?”

The Ampatuans, they say, simply have too much access to IRAs, the revenue shares given by the national government to local governments as part of their subsidy.

The Local Government Code of 1991 provides that 40 percent of national internal revenues shall go to local governments. Of this 40 percent, the provinces get 23 percent; cities, 23 percent; municipalities, 34 percent; and barangays, 20 percent.

Each individual province, city, town or barangay in turn receives a share according to an allocation formula based on population (50 percent weight), land area (25 percent), and an equal sharing component (25 percent).

Theoretically, of course, where these sums go and how they are used are supposed to be monitored and recorded down to the last centavo. But Bai Nariman Ambolodto, who was the acting governor of Maguindanao from December 15, 2009 to February 23, 2010, cannot – or would not – even say how much money was left in the provincial coffers when she took over last year. Other sources say only a pittance was left.

Ambolodto, who has continued to serve as Maguindanao’s acting vice governor after her temporary stint as the provincial chief executive, said queries about how much was left of the P84.4 million in IRA funds that Maguindanao gets monthly should be referred to the Commission on Audit.

The state auditing agency finished its special audit of the province by the third week of January, but has yet to release the report as of this writing.

Coincidentally, late last year, the London-based peacebuilding organization International Alert released a study that observed, among other things: “Fund transfers between the central government to the ARMM in the form of internal revenue allotments (IRA) constitute the bulk of funds placed under the control of the clans…. With government consumption expenditures in the ARMM growing at a faster rate than the rest of Mindanao combined, it was clear that whoever controlled the state would control these sums.”

More towns, villages
At the very least, since 2003, new towns and barangays had suddenly begun sprouting in Maguindanao, meaning more local government units there have been receiving IRAs. Interestingly as well, up until recently, members of the Ampatuan clan took control over most of these new local government units.

Creating new towns is apparently easier to do in ARMM compared to other areas in the country.

Under Section 442 of the Local Government Code, a municipality may be created if it has an average annual income of at least P2.5 million for two consecutive years based on the 1991 constant prices; a population of at least 25,000; and a contiguous territory of at least 50 square kilometers.

But under Section 437 of the Muslim Mindanao Autonomy Act (MMA) No. 25 or the Local Government Code of the ARMM, a municipality may be created if it has an average annual income of at least P1 million for two consecutive years based on the 1993 constant prices; a population of at least 10,000; and a contiguous territory of at least 30 square kilometers.

In ARMM, the Regional Legislative Assembly (RLA) passes laws creating towns. The ARMM governor then appoints officers in charge for the new municipality who will serve until the town’s regular officials are elected.

In 2006, the RLA even created Shariff Kabunsuan province out of Maguindanao. Two years later, however, the Supreme Court declared the move unconstitutional, noting that only Congress can create provinces.

Maguindanao itself had only 21 municipalities prior to 2001, when Andal Sr. was first elected governor. By 2004, it had 25. Since 2005, or after Zaldy Ampatuan became ARMM governor, the province has added 11 more towns. According to the National Statistics Office, the province had 36 towns and 506 barangays as of last year.

Power to kin

Pending elections, Governor Zaldy Ampatuan seemed to have had no compunctions over appointing relatives as officers in charge of the newly created towns in his family’s home province.

In Maguindanao’s three newest municipalities, for instance, he appointed as acting mayors wife Bai Johaira ‘Bongbong’ Midtimbang Ampatuan, for Datu Hofer; sister-in-law Bai Zandria (wife of then Maguindanao Acting Governor Sajid Ampatuan, the youngest among his siblings) for Shariff Saydona Mustapha; and Datu Akmad B. Ampatuan for Datu Salibo.

Yet while the most powerful and influential Ampatuans are now in detention in connection with the November 23, 2009 massacre in Ampatuan, Maguindanao, no one is discounting a strong showing by the clan at the upcoming polls.

As it is, 49 Ampatuans are running for various posts in Maguindanao, including 10 of the 12 in detention.

Sitting out the May polls are former Datu Unsay mayor Andal Jr. and Zaldy, whose term of office is scheduled to lapse on Sept 30, 2011 yet. But Andal Jr.’s first wife, Reshal Santiago, is making a bid for the mayoralty of Datu Unsay, while Zaldy’s wife, Bai Johaira or Bongbong, is gunning for a regular stint as mayor of Datu Hofer.

Bongbong and Zaldy’s eldest daughter, 20-year-old Bai Noraillah Kristina, is a candidate for councilor of the same town. Mother and daughter are running unopposed.

Andal Sr., meanwhile, is vying for the post of Maguindanao vice governor. Among his three opponents is daughter Shaydee Ampatuan-Abutazil.

Two bets by choice

According to an Ampatuan relative who would rather not be named, the family’s fielding of at least two candidates among its members was done on purpose – to ensure that should something happen to the first clan candidate, another clan member would remain in the contest.

Rajah Buayan Mayor Yacob ‘Datu Jack’ Lumenda Ampatuan, who is seeking reelection against his brother Kuzbari, says the uncertainty that today hounds the clan’s political future dominated a meeting of the Ampatuan family and its allies that was held days before the deadline for filing of certificates of candidacy.

The massacre occurred last November 23, or just eight days to the December 1 deadline, prompting the clan to field two candidates to the same position, “just in case,” he says.

Datu Jack is husband of Bai Aloha Uy Ampatuan, the youngest daughter of Andal Ampatuan Sr. and Bai Laila Piang Uy Ampatuan.

Keep ‘em poor

Keeping a firm grasp on power, even as their constituents are kept poor and poorly schooled — that seems to be the quirky logic behind the Ampatuan clan, according to Eastern Mindanao Command chief, Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer.

The clan members, he says, “armed themselves because they kept saying they were fighting the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) and were fighting for government.” In the process, the Ampatuans got from Arroyo not only weapons, but also piles of public funds.

Says Ferrer: “(There’s) nothing wrong with that but the problem is, I believe, when he (Andal Sr.) became governor, he became so powerful and I think maybe he started feeling untouchable because whatever political favor he gets from national government (he could get).”

In this situation, he reckons that both the poverty and the insurgency of Maguindanao and ARMM will neither yield nor end. “Some people can sustain the MILF so that they will not disappear, so they can justify lack of governance and justify spending of IRA for security, for intelligence,” says Ferrer. “Nobody will audit you in Maguindanao, if there is MILF there.”

Political dynasties like the Ampatuans, he says, seem to think that peace is an enemy, a challenge to authority. “If you are a warlord, it’s better if you have an enemy,” says the general, “because if it’s peaceful… somebody will challenge your political leadership, people will be educated, they will start questioning or start invoking their rights… it’s better to keep them ignorant, it’s better if they’re poor because they will just depend on what you give them.” – With additional reporting by Ed Lingao, PCIJ, March 2010

(To be continued)

MAURA Montano doesn’t live in General Santos City anymore – not after the family breadwinner, Montano’s daughter Marife or ‘Neneng,’ who worked at radio station DXCP and Saksi Balita, was killed along with 57 others in Ampatuan, Maguindanao last November. Montano and Neneng’s two children have had to move to Alabel, Sarangani to live with Neneng’s brother because the sextagenarian lola has no means to pay rent and raise her orphaned grandchildren.

The mother of another media victim sought a reporter’s help for P500 to buy milk for the baby her slain daughter left behind.

The blood pressure of the widow of one of the murdered journalists shot up a few weeks ago not because she just had a caesarian delivery, but because a relative had shown her the partial hospital billing. Her BP returned to normal only when she was assured a media assistance group was going to foot the bill.

It has been four months since the massacre in Maguindanao, in which the alleged main perpetrators are members of a rich and powerful clan.

Until their detention, the principal suspects in the murder of Neneng and at least 57 others on November 23, 2009 lived in mansions in the country’s third poorest province, in neighboring cities, and even in Metro Manila.

They traveled with a retinue of heavily armed escorts in a convoy of black SUVs, flew business class, and paid the equivalent of at least two business-class tickets for the handling fees of their bodyguards’ guns flown on board (and several thousands of pesos more for their bodyguards’ tickets).

Each of their purchase, including those of multimillion-peso lots and luxury vehicles, was reportedly paid for in cold cash.

How they acquired their supposedly fabulous fortune cannot be explained in the documents submitted by the public officials among them. But an unbridled access to public monies may be one of the keys to the puzzle, as is the willingness of national government officials to tolerate even the excesses of a political ally.

Of wealth, weapons

For sure, no other political clan in Mindanao history has flaunted its wealth and array of weapons as much as the Ampatuans of Maguindanao have. Not Mindanao’s top three richest governors – Davao del Norte’s Rodolfo del Rosario, Bukidnon’ s Jose Ma. Zubiri, and Zamboanga Sibugay’s George Hofer – whose yearend net worth in 2007 were P408.94 million, P103.42 million,  and P100.63 million, respectively. Not even the late warlord Ali Dimaporo of Lanao del Sur was this brazen, although he did have fishponds in Lanao and a mansion at the exclusive Corinthian Gardens in Metro Manila.

Indeed, even with several members of the Ampatuan clan in detention for the massacre in Maguindanao, the family’s wealth remains legendary. For instance, in the first few days of their detention, the principal suspects in the massacre, as well as their aides and visitors, enjoyed catered meals.

The clan has also hired 80 lawyers, says Philip Pantojan, the Ampatuans’ Davao City-based lead attorney for Mindanao. He adds that 40 of the lawyers are in Metro Manila and headed by Philip Sigfrid Fortun, whose list of previous clients includes then President Joseph Estrada.

The lawyers are available on a 24/7 basis, says Pantojan, and are paid as soon as service has been rendered.

Securing legal expertise to this extent has been made necessary by the detention of key personalities in the Ampatuan clan: Andal Jr., Datu Unsay mayor, at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Manila since November 26;  Maguindanao Governor Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr. in a private hospital and later at a military health facility in Davao City since December 5; and Andal Sr.’s other sons Datu Zaldy, governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM); Anwar, mayor of Shariff Aguak; Sajid, former Maguindanao vice governor and acting Maguindanao governor; and son-in-law Akmad ‘Tato’ Ampatuan, Mamasapano mayor later appointed Maguindanao vice governor, all of them in General Santos City, and also since early December.

Andal Jr. had reportedly led the armed men who had stopped a convoy of vehicles along the highway of Ampatuan town in Maguindanao that fateful November morning. Some 58 people, 32 of them media personnel, were then herded 3.5 kilometers up to Sitio Masalay in Barangay Salman, where they were all shot dead.

Andal Sr., Zaldy, and company were arrested for alleged rebellion and later charged as conspirators of Andal Jr. in the massacre.

Although the crime shocked almost everyone, it did not seem to surprise residents of Maguindanao itself. Yet, even today, few of them are willing to talk openly about life there under the Ampatuans.

Wealth from land?

Since the arrest of the clan’s most powerful members, though, there has been no dearth of stories about the Ampatuans’ reportedly immense riches, many of them told by people who say they witnessed the family’s spending sprees first-hand or were privy to some of the Ampatuans’ major transactions.

Official documents filed by the Ampatuans themselves confirm that several members of the clan are millionaires. The figures and assets they cite, however, fall far short of what people believe – and what some of their own relatives say – they have.

Rebecca Ampatuan-Ampatuan, wife of Tato Ampatuan and eldest child of Andal Sr. and his first wife Bai Laila Uy, has told reporters who have raised questions about the source of the family’s wealth, “We have vast landholdings – we have ricelands, coconut lands, cornfields.”

Visitors to Maguindanao, particularly to Shariff Aguak and its neighboring towns, are also often shown what residents there say are the vast landholdings of the Ampatuans.

In his 2000 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN), Andal Sr. had declared farming as among his sources of income, even though by then he had served as Shariff Aguak mayor for a decade and then as its vice-mayor from 1998.

Interestingly enough, as farmer-vice mayor, he earned only P280,352.25 by the end of 2000 –  P160,744 as vice mayor and P181,608.25 from “farming.”

Still, Andal Sr. said his net worth was P6.19 million, with assets consisting of  a “residential house” in Poblacion Shariff Aguak worth P2.78 million, a “farm and residential lot” also in Shariff Aguak, worth P1.53 million, one Ford 7600 tractor acquired in 1989 for P250,000 and one Nissan Safari bought in 1994 for P1.65 million. Under liabilities, he listed a P30,000 loan from “private individual.”

Six wives, 40 children

By his 2001 SALN, Andal Sr.  no longer included “farming” among his income sources. Six years later, when he was already on his third and last term as Maguindanao governor, Andal Sr. would declare a net worth of P18.5 million, and two farmlands in Shariff Aguak and Ampatuan towns, a residential lot in Shariff Aguak, an old house and lot and new house and lot acquired in 1980 and 1994-1995 in Shariff Aguak and two F-150 pickups (with plate numbers GOB 111 and GUV 111) as his assets.

Although relatively substantial, Andal Sr.’s net worth in 2007 would not have amounted to much if that was all he had to maintain the six wives his daughter Rebecca says he has, and about 40 children (including two who have passed away).

It certainly would not have been enough even for just the Davao City mansion being built for Bai Laila, Andal Sr.’s first wife and mother of 11 of his children, among them Rebecca, Andal Jr., and Zaldy.

Located in Juna Subdivision, the structure costs some P28.2 million, according to its building permit issued on July 2, 2008. It has a floor area of 2,705 square meters, equivalent to that of 150 government low-cost housing units that average 18 square meters each.

Targeted for completion in February 2009, the mansion was still under construction on November 24, a day after the massacre. But work stopped there soon after, rendering the 200 laborers at the site jobless, says a caretaker at the palatial residence.

A check at the City Assessor’s Office in Davao City for property registered under the name Ampatuan yielded a total of 39, four of them owned by former Justice Secretary Simeon Ampatuan Datumanong. The remaining 35 are owned by members of Andal Sr.’s immediate family.

(A similar check was attempted at the Provincial Assessor’s Office in Maguindanao, but this reporter was barred from continuing with her search by provincial assessor Kanguan M. Pendi without a “court order or…the consent of the landowners.”)

Nestled in Davao

The Ampatuans apparently consider Davao City their second home. After all, it is in that city, not in neighboring Cotabato City, that their children go to school and where they set up residence for the most part of the year.

Andal Sr., has eight listed properties in Davao: four in Juna Subdivision, an enclave of the city’s old rich, among them a 4,015-square-meter lot that is likely the site of Bai Laila’s unfinished mansion; two in Matina Crossing; and two in Nova Tierra. The recorded total market value of all eight lots is P11.39 million. (According to real-estate experts, however, the market values on record are “for taxation purposes” and are a mere quarter of the actual market values.)
Andal Jr. has 16 to his name: nine in Juna Subdivision, two in Matina Crossing, three in Nova Tierra and two in Luzviminda Subdivision, with a total market value of P11.22 million.  Of the 16, 12 have land areas between 450 and 750 square meters and come up to a total of 7,488 square meters.

Junior most wealthy

Based on their SALNs, Andal Jr. is the richest among the Ampatuans, having declared a net worth of P39.3 million as of yearend 2008. His listed business interest, however, was rather modest: owner of the Shariff Aguak Petron Station in Shariff Aguak since 1999, although he also declared his wife Reshal owner of the Datu Aguak Motorcycle Center in Shariff Aguak.

Andal Jr.’s 2008 SALN also shows him to have just three properties in Davao, including two houses and one residential lot. But he listed two more houses and two other residential lots in Shariff Aguak and Cotabato City, as well as farm lots in Shariff Aguak and Datu Unsay town. According to his SALN, he had only one vehicle, a Mitsubishi Pajero purchased in Manila in 2007 for P2.6 million.

Meanwhile, the Davao City Assessor’s Office records show that Anwar has two properties here, both in Juna Subdivision, with a total market value of P1.66 million. One has an area of 680 square meters.

Sajid has three – all in Guadalupe Village – with a total land area of 900 square meters and a total market value of P1.35 million.

Rebecca herself has three as well, all in Flores Village, and with a total land area of 1,200 square meters and a market value of P830,000.

Surprisingly, in the Davao City Assessor’s list, there is no property under the name of suspended ARMM Governor Zaldy, who is theoretically second in power in the family after Andal Sr., and even though a mansion on Kalamansi St. in Juna Subdivision is widely believed to be his.

Zaldy doubles net

In his 2007 SALN, Zaldy had also included among his assets three “residential lots and houses” – one in Shariff Aguak and two in Davao City. He also had a piece of agricultural land in Shariff Aguak, he said, plus  three vehicles: a Toyota Hilux (LFN12) purchased in 2006 for P1.35 million and Toyota Hilux (LFJ 606) purchased in 2006 for the same amount and a Mitsubishi Pajero (DZN 168) purchased also in 2006 for P2.8 million.

All in all, Zaldy figured his net worth in 2007 to be P16.41 million, or more than double what he declared in 2000.

The Davao City assessor’s list, however, does have three properties in the name of Zaldy’s wife Bongbong: one in Buhangin and two in Matina Crossing with a total market value of P1.21 million.

Other researches and interviews meanwhile indicate that the Ampatuan siblings and their relatives have several other properties across Davao City. They also could have snapped up more pieces of real estate in that city had not the massacre happened.

They also could have snapped up more pieces of real estate in that city had not the massacre happened.

At the very least, some residents living near mansions believed to belong to the Ampatuans had already put up ‘For Sale’ signs in front of their homes.  The Ampatuans, the residents say, typically give you an offer so big you cannot refuse, and they pay in cold cash.

But then again, more than just the money, there was the fear that living next door to the clan is not a good idea at all. “They had guns and drivers of their convoy acted like they owned the streets,” explains one Juna homeowner, referring to the Ampatuans. “Our neighbors were already starting to sell. If the massacre did not happen, we probably would have sold our (home), too.”

“I’m afraid of guns,” says the resident, whose house is just a few blocks away from the Ampatuan mansions in Juna.  “Guns are a source of trouble. I don’t want my family caught in the crossfire.” (To be continued) – PCIJ, March 2010

This report exposes what population experts call a statistical anomaly with grave implications on the conduct and results of the May 10, 2010 elections the inexplicable sharp spike in the population growth rate of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Between 2000 and 2007, ARMM posted a 5.46 percent population growth rate, or almost triple the national average of only 2.04 percent.Except for Metro Manila, the nations center of commerce, education and government, all other regions posted slower growth rates.

But what population experts said about demographic questions and mysteries in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) – topics previously discussed only in the confines of the classroom or office – could prove just as important as the gory details coming out of the criminal trial.

From the plenary discussions and interviews on the sidelines of the conference held late last week, the emerging picture on how the 2007 population census conducted in the ARMM is not pretty. Outright fraud, political pressure, and security threats marred the 2007 population census in the region, according to government statistics officials and demographers.

On top of these, some local leaders also engaged in a “balik-ARMM” campaign to encourage migrants to visit their hometowns, artificially boosting population numbers during the census, officials and experts said.

All these and more could help explain the big riddle that is the autonomous region’s excessively high annual population growth rate of 5.46 percent between 2000 and 2007, almost triple the national average of only 2.04 percent.

Overall population growth is slowing but ARMM proved to be a big exception. It expanded faster in the 2000-2007 period compared to the average of 3.75 percent between 1995 and 2000.

All other regions posted lower population growth since 2000, except Metro Manila because of high levels of in-migration from other regions.

Far from being just a matter for statisticians, soaring population numbers underscored heftier allocation of internal revenue funds for the ARMM’s regional, provincial and municipal governments.

Government investigators are now checking if some of the funds were used to build the arsenal and palatial mansions of the powerful former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan and his sons, two of whom are now in jail for their alleged role in the November 2009 massacre, by far the most gruesome and most deadly case of election-related violence in years. It was also the biggest single-day murder of media workers in world history.

More voters, too?

High population growth is also related to the rapid rise in the number of registered voters in the region, where President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her allies won some of the ruling party’s biggest election margins in the 2004 and 2007 polls. Coincidentally, ARMM was tagged as allegedly being the center of dagdag-bawas (add-subtract) operations of then elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano of the ‘Hello, Garci’ scandal during the 2004 elections.

Many demographers and social scientists had been entertaining doubts and questions about the ARMM’s unusually high population growth rate between 2000 and 2007. In last week’s Philippine Population Association conference, they finally had a chance to discuss these openly and in the presence of top officials of the National Statistics Office (NSO), which is responsible for carrying out the census.

One of the speakers, Dalisay Maligalig, senior statistician at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), put forth the question that was probably foremost in each participant’s mind. “Is this statistically possible?” she asked after taking note of the wide disparity between population growths in the ARMM and the national average.

ARMM also stands out as an outlier even when compared to other areas in Mindanao, none of which had a population growth of no more than 2.5 percent a year since 2000, said the ADB statistician.

She pointed out that Region IX (Zamboanga Peninsula), which has the same population as ARMM, grew by only 1.83 percent, or just a third posted by the autonomous region. Nearby provinces also had much lower population growth rates.

The differences are starker when some ARMM provinces are compared with their neighbors. Maguindanao’s population grew by 6.99 percent a year, way above 1.5 percent in South Cotabato, 2.1 percent in Sarangani, and 2.2 percent in North Cotabato.

Much worse

In a poster presentation on using barangay-level data to assess the quality of the 2000 census, Florio Arguillas of Cornell University and Joy Arguillas of the University of the Philippines observed that one barangay in Shariff Aguak town, Maguindanao’s capital and traditional stronghold of the Ampatuan clan, grew by an average of 13.6 percent per year between 2000 and 2007. Perhaps because of the big jump in population, what was one barangay in 2000, aptly named Labu-Labu, became three barangays in 2007.

“You have to question the growth rates in ARMM. It is so high, so unlikely given the population, the economic condition of ARMM,” Florio Arguillas told the PCIJ in an interview before the conference.

NSO chief Carmelita Ericta, and one of conference’s plenary speakers, admitted there were numerous problems in doing the ARMM census in 2007.

“Actually the ARMM results have undergone internal evaluation,” she said during the open forum following her presentation. “The initial results were much worse but we had no way of going back and verifying for ourselves because of security concerns.”

Talking to the PCIJ after the conference, she said the statistics agency had to weed out questionable data as part of a careful review of initial results that suggested population in the region grew by about 10 percent each year since 2000.

Fraud, pressure, threat

Census-taking is not easy, said Ericta. As it is, affluent households suspect that census data will be used for tax investigations while informal settlers believe it is a prelude to eventual demolition of their communities.

But, Ericta said, these difficulties are compounded by instances of outright fraud, political pressure, and even threats against the security of census-takers in the ARMM.

She said the easiest to deal with were the cases where the same names – usually of famous movie stars – were written down as those of members of unusually big households. “We just usually cross-out the data,” she said. She added that big jumps in average household size compared with previous census data were another indicator of possible attempts to manipulate the census results.

A little bit harder to tackle were cases of pressure coming from powerful local leaders who are keen to see populations soar in order to seek bigger revenue allotments, the creation of new towns or congressional districts, and more votes to command during elections. Mayors chair the local census coordination board, which is supposed to sign on to the results of the census in the towns and cities.

The NSO administrator said the problem was “more apparent in the ARMM than in other areas.”

“Some government officials think this is an exchange. They provided t-shirts or snacks or equipment so census-takers should accommodate what they want. There is a thin line between coordination and influence,” Ericta said.

The NSO, she explained, tries to address local government concerns that the population was being undercounted in their territory by holding saturation drives to recount the number of people through sample survey. She said these kinds of complaints from local leaders are common.

Local execs’ demand

“Even at my level, there are attempts,” to press for higher population numbers, Ericta said. “Mayors, governors, senators (demand it) because it affects legislation, especially if they want to create (new territories).”

Though no census-taker was killed for refusing to accommodate local leaders’ requests, some were subjected to threats, she said. “In some cases, they were refused entry,” into a community, she said. “In some cases, they (local leaders) want to influence the results. That is part of the risk we take in census-taking.”

The NSO has also heard about cases where local officials in the ARMM actively encouraged former residents to come home for a visit to temporarily boost population numbers during census-taking, Ericta said.

“It’s not the only place where they do that,” she said. But she noted that officials in ARMM “have a tendency to call their people and ask them to be there for the census.”

Back to Caesar?

Mercedes Concepcion, one of the country’s foremost demographers and founder of the UP Population Institute, said she also heard about the “balik-ARMM” campaign of local officials before the census. She commented: “This meant we are going back to the first census ever taken, and that was the time of the first Caesar Augustus when Joseph and Mary went back to be enumerated.”

The NSO can undertake post-enumeration surveys (PES) to check the accuracy of the census but statistics officials said conducting such a survey in ARMM was nearly impossible because of security problems. None was undertaken in spite of the mounting questions and doubts about the quality of census data in the region.

Socorro Abejo, the NSO’s chief demographer, told the conference: “In the 1990 post-enumeration survey, we were able to penetrate all areas. I went to the ARMM region, I was able to visit all the barangays sampled. The difference now is that in 2007 there was this security concern. There was difficulty in penetrating barangays which were away from Cotabato City.”

She appealed for understanding about the limits of what the NSO can do amid possible dangers to the lives of the census-takers. “The indirect evaluation techniques that we can do in our office would tell us there is something wrong but we should also be aware that if we will venture in conducting post enumeration survey there is this concern, the fear that our procedure will not work in this region because of this security concern.”

‘Remove faulty data’

In an interview at the sidelines of the conference, Concepcion said, “I have always maintained that the ARMM (census) data are so faulty they should be removed entirely from the population totals.”

But NSO officials said they are not allowed by the law to exclude census data for a locality even if they themselves still have some questions about accuracy. “After data cleaning and evaluation procedures, we had to stop at some time,” and release the figures, Ericta said. In the case of ARMM, she said, “by the time we stopped, it was down to just five percent,” instead of about 10 percent initially.

She said the NSO had wanted to take and use aerial photographs to estimate population in the ARMM but “we couldn’t do that either because of security considerations.”

Biggest IRA growth

The real-world implications of all these quibbling over numbers is serious. Indeed, when the 2007 population census data were first applied to compute local governments’ internal revenue allotments (IRA) from the national government in 2008, the allocation for ARMM soared by 27.3 percent to P8.7 billion from P6.8 billion the previous year, according to the Department of Budget and Management.

The autonomous region posted the biggest percentage jump in IRA. The revenue allocation for the rest of the regions rose by an average of only 13.8 percent.

This is hardly surprising because population accounts for half the weights of the criteria used to calculate a local government’s IRA. Land area has a weight of only 25 percent.

Similarly, ARMM posted the biggest increase in the number of registered voters between 2002 and 2007, rising by 26.2 percent compared with the national average growth of only 18.8 percent, according to data from the Commission on Elections.

In Maguindanao, there were more 18-year-olds, the age at which one can vote in the Philippines, than any other age group below 18, except 10, according to the poster presentation by Florio and Joy Arguillas, citing results from the 2000 census. The study suggests that data quality problems beset the census not just in 2007 but also the one in 2000.

“There is one barangay (where) you can’t find children under two years (old). So two years before the census, they stopped producing children?” asked Florio Arguillas.

For good or bad, census and elections – perhaps because both involve counting people – seem to be so intrinsically linked in the Philippines.

In fact, on May 17, 2010, just a week after the May 10 elections, the government is scheduled to roll out the next population census across the nation. – PCIJ, February 2010