BASED ON THE government's own statements, the twin priorities in securing Fr. Michael Sinnott’s release are to accomplish it without unduly risking his life, and without paying ransom. Overall, the authorities continue to view the kidnapping of the Columban missionary as a police matter, but there remains an unavoidably political aspect to the kidnapping.
The political aspect involves the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the stalled Mindanao peace process with existing peace panels representing the MILF and the government, and the existence of a multisectoral crisis committee set up by President Macapagal-Arroyo tasked with securing the release of the kidnapped cleric.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines is playing a prominent role in intelligence gathering and has announced that it is poised to launch rescue operations as soon as the multisectoral crisis committee gives the go signal. There are also units of the Philippine National Police active in the area and an ongoing bid for turf implied in PNP Director-General Jesus Versoza’s statements that investigating the Sinnott kidnapping should be treated as a “police function.”
If this weren’t a complicated situation as it is—for there’s the risk that either the AFP or the PNP will jump the gun in a bid to gain glory—the MILF has expressed interest in rescuing the Irish priest, too, provided, according to its spokesman Eid Kabalu, it gets permission from the crisis committee. Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno responded in turn by expressing a preference for the proposed MILF rescue mission to be coursed through the peace panels representing the MILF and the government, respectively.
The AFP and PNP and national officials are hardly coy about their belief that the MILF doesn’t merely know where the kidnapped priest is being held, but is actually a party to the kidnapping. If it is natural for the AFP and the PNP to be rivals in the sense that one would prefer to gain credit for tracking down and rescuing the priest ahead of the other, both seem united in having a suspicious attitude towards the MILF.
The MILF, for its part, sensitive to international opinion, has an interest in being perceived overseas not as the perpetrator of the kidnapping, but as the liberator of the priest. Catholic missionaries and the senior clergy, after all, are a useful buffer against the military and police, with the Catholic hierarchy being supportive of the peace process and much of the MILF’s political objectives.
The government, however, is loath to strengthen the claim of the MILF to being an independent power to reckon with. It doesn’t want the rebel group to seize the opportunity to claim that it—and not government forces—is effective in terms of attending to law-and-order matters in the areas it claims to be its bailiwick.
These are questions our officials need to take into account, but they are secondary to the humanitarian task at hand: to secure the release of an elderly and ailing kidnap victim, as quickly as possible, without unduly risking lives and without paying ransom.
We detect an unwillingness on the part of our officials to concede that the MILF could resolve the situation because it would involve a loss of face for too many institutions: both the AFP and the PNP, plus the Department of Interior and Local Government. We suggest that these institutions resign themselves to the fact that the loss of face took place when Sinnott was kidnapped in the first place.
And they should consider the possibility that even if the MILF, as some officials have intimated, are explicitly or implicitly involved in the kidnapping, it would be more productive to give the rebel group the chance to prove true to its word, and secure the release of the kidnapped priest using its own methods. After all the Catholic hierarchy has announced that it will not pay ransom, which strikes at the heart of what many similar kidnappings of this sort hope to achieve: to score political points by having a platform for the kidnappers to vent their opinions but also reap a financial windfall through extortion.
