No alternative truth

A frantic effort to deflect public outrage as a result of the 25 January 2015 Mamasapano tragedy that resulted in the death of 44 young policemen led former President Noynoy Aquino and his spin doctors to coin the phrase “alternative truth.”

The alibi only served to further enrage the public who was seeking an intelligent explanation on the massacre.

Noynoy initially called the incident a misencounter following the line of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). He failed to attend the ceremony when the bodies of the slain commandos were brought home. He opposed the giving of any distinction to the Fallen 44 and he even sought the removal of a mural depicting the slain policemen.

Noynoy, instead, made a spirited defense of the MILF. Not one member of the MILF has been charged over the incident as then Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on apparent orders from Noynoy failed to make good with her vow to prosecute more than 100 rebels involved in the carnage.

It is only now under President Rody Duterte that the cases are making headway.

The alternative truth was also meant to isolate Mar Roxas from the incident and pave the way for his presidential run.

Roxas, based on the Palace script then, was supposedly taken out of the loop from the botched Operation Exodus that resulted in the killing of Malaysian terrorist Marwan at the great cost of losing the 44 Special Action Force (SAF) commandos.

Many doubted the alternative truth of a misencounter and Roxas being left out in the execution of Oplan Exodus. Roxas, after all, has been called Noynoy’s alter ego and who could not have missed out on something as big as the operations to capture an international terrorist.

That more than 300 SAF commandos and some American specialists were included in Oplan Exodus against Marwan who was the American government’s top terror target in Asia.

The US involvement in Oplan Exodus included training of the SAF commandos for the mission.

The twisting of facts started immediately after the disaster struck as Noynoy initially claimed it was an operation that had SAF Commander Getulio Napeñas as solely responsible for it.

He would later admit to the participation of his trusted general former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Alan Purisima in directing the operation despite his being under suspension by the Ombudsman.

The alternative truth was also lifted from the MILF playbook in that it was Marwan’s men who killed him and not the commandos.

The incident haunted Noynoy without end and his reaction was to dump on the lap of the SAF the botched mission and thus free him from culpability.

The operation went awry after the police units were pounced upon by Muslim rebels, including elements of the MILF.

When the firefight started, reinforcements did not arrive and the SAF commandos were easily routed by their enemies which later turned out as coming from diverse groups that included private armies of politicians in the area.

At that time, according to the recounting in an L.A. Times report from an interview with an American commander involved in the mission, the US forces guided the commandos through drones in an effort to get them to safety.

The response, however, from the command post was too slow and even static as investigations conducted by the Senate and the PNP Board of Inquiry indicated.

“It was a bungled operation and it has had major fallout,” David Maxwell, a retired Army colonel who commanded the US special operations force in the Philippines in 2006 and 2007, said.

Noynoy in some accounts intervened personally in the operations, ordering reinforcements to the beleaguered commando units to “stand down,” resulting in the massacre of members of the elite police unit.

Noynoy’s alternative truth was clearly meant to twist the truth with the objectives of clearing both Noynoy and Roxas who will have the straight path mantra as a major campaign cry.