It has been one month since the massacre of 57 people, including 30 media men, was committed in Ampatuan, Maguindanao, and it appears that the victims and their relatives will obtain justice.

There is a fair probability that they will get justice in the courts, but that is not enough to give complete justice to them. For complete justice to be rendered to the victims and their families, the government has to go beyond holding court trials. It has to strike at the very roots of the massacre, the political phenomena that made possible the commission of the unspeakable crime.

The government has to go after political warlords who made it possible to subvert the will of the people at the polls, and it has to neutralize them now, before the elections in May 2010. If they are not put out of commission now, they will still exert power and influence before and during the elections and may yet determine the results in the national and local polls.

The government has to start the process of breaking up political dynasties. This, of course, will be a long, complex process because it entails the passage of legislation that would implement the constitutional provision that says that it is the state policy to prohibit political dynasties as may be provided by law. The process will also have to enlist the help of the people themselves who will have to be convinced that the cultivation and coddling of political dynasties are anti-democratic and not good for them.

The government has to dismantle private armies and stop the practice of supplying them with firearms and ammunition through legal and illegal means. Some of these private armies are ostensibly being used to help the army and the police in fighting rebels and criminal groups. But experience has shown that very often, these private armies go out of control and commit atrocities against the people. The Maguindanao massacre is a horrific example of that.

The people have to exert continuing pressure on the government to put an end to the culture of impunity. It is this culture that has made possible the killing of unarmed, noncombatant activists and militants in the past eight and half years of the Arroyo administration. It is this culture that also made possible the slaying of 99 journalists, including the 30 massacred in Maguindanao, during the same period. We cannot hope to see the end of the culture of impunity under the Arroyo administration, which has given encouragement to and even publicly praised those who ordered the killing of activists. We will have to demand from the next president, whoever he may be, that he put an end to the culture of impunity.

The Maguindanao massacre is a crime so heinous, so barbaric, so monstrous that its victims and their relatives cry out to high heavens for justice to be done to them. Justice in this case cannot be complete and final unless the root causes that made possible the commission of this atrocity are addressed and permanent solutions adopted.