A country still reeling from shock is beginning to shift its attention from the killing fields of Ampatuan, Maguindanao, to that vast no-man’s-land called the government’s prosecutorial service. Make no mistake: some—many—of the government’s underpaid, overworked prosecutors (the old title of fiscal still clings to them, like nostalgia) have done or are doing good work. But the Department of Justice has always been vulnerable to the politics of incumbency, and the four years or so under Raul Gonzalez saw the service at its most politicized. It is too early to tell whether the DoJ, under Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera, has recovered from the trauma, but we are not hopeful.

Like Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, Devanadera suffers from the reputation of excessive loyalty to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Since the President’s controversial election victory in 2004 owes in part to the support she received from Andal Ampatuan Sr. and his “command vote” in Maguindanao, public opinion is understandably skeptical of the President’s true resolve in bringing justice to the victims of the Ampatuan massacre. The national government’s own measured, perhaps overly cautious approach to arresting Andal Ampatuan Jr., the mastermind of the killings as alleged by many witnesses, added to the skepticism.

We understand that a case can be made for the government’s caution in the first few days: It wanted to avoid another bloodbath, it needed to firm up its evidence before effecting a high-risk arrest, and so on. We understand, too, the public’s scathing criticism of this approach, but fairness demands that we also recognize the following: the approach worked. Andal Jr., the high-spirited town mayor feared throughout the region, is in detention and facing multiple charges.

What happens next will help determine, not only the reputation of Devanadera and her prosecutors for all time, but also whether the victims of the Nov. 23 massacre, including all of us who believe in the rule of law and the role of a free press, will ever get justice.

The massacre, in other words, provides the government’s prosecutorial service an extraordinary opportunity to restore the public’s faith in the administration of justice.

What does this mean, concretely?

It means the government must go out of its way to protect all the witnesses, and their kith and kin, from possible retaliation. Already, journalists in the region have been receiving death threats and other forms of intimidation—ostensibly in the guise of reminders to be “responsible.” We can only expect worse once the identities of the witnesses start filtering out to the public at large. We understand that the DoJ’s Witness Protection Program is woefully under-funded, but Devanadera can and should impress upon the President the urgent and non-negotiable need to protect all witnesses, and their loved ones, regardless of the cost. The arithmetic of intimidation is simple enough: one only needs to harm one witness to strike fear into all the others. That is why protection is imperative.

The opportunity also means that the government must create the right conditions on the ground; the private armies (not only of the Ampatuans) must be dismantled, the firearms confiscated, normalcy restored. This is not the responsibility of the DoJ, of course, but this condition-setting must be seen as part of the government’s effort to let the truth about the massacre surface.

Not least, the opportunity means that the government must present the best possible case against Andal Jr. and (in the future) all the other accused. In other words, vital as the testimony of eyewitnesses will be, the DoJ must prepare a foolproof case that relies, even redundantly, on other evidence too. The now-notorious backhoe, for instance, is evidence. Prosecutors do not need to rely on investigators’ tracking of witnesses to determine when the backhoe was brought to the site and what possible public works project required its presence there.

In sum, there is a real need this time for the DoJ to exercise an excess of caution, in protecting the witnesses and their loved ones, and in preparing a thorough, recantation-proof case.