Ronald Llamas is right

Ronald Llamas is not hiding. He has done nothing wrong. He has not broken the law. His president has not asked him to resign. He has cooperated with the police. He may have been caught with the metaphorical smoking gun, but he has explained that he is not the party that should be attacked for illegal possession of firearms, if you please. Please direct your attention to gentlemen John Alarcon and Joey Tecson, and the fact that being in Llamas’ payroll does not mean he is responsible for their decisions.

Llamas was in Switzerland when his Mitsubishi Montero and his driver Tecson met controversy after a traffic accident with an Isuzu Elf Truck. He was away when his bodyguard Alarcon and Tecson were caught on video with an AK-47 tucked under a car seat, and he certainly is not responsible for his two other aides, Reagan Lita and Michael de Chavez, who rushed to the scene in a Hyundai Starex to retrieve the gun.

Listen to Llamas. His guns are registered, even the machine gun. He is under threat, and certainly has a right to more firepower than the average Philippine Army unit. He is not under investigation. He is in no way concerned, with the exception of the possibility the issue will be overblown and might compromise his president. Perhaps this is why his friends from Akbayan are suddenly silent, and why all the soapboxes have been abandoned by the defenders of democracy.

President Aquino, he said, spoke about the “context of the events and the political implications that it might be used by our detractors to make a big thing out of the issue.” He spoke about Llamas’ recent trip to Switzerland and on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. They talked about compliments of former Portugal Prime Minister Antonio Guterres to Mr. Aquino. They spoke of his younger sister Kris as Ambassador of Goodwill in Asia. They did not speak much about guns or mistakes, because it was not substantial.

Llamas is correct. There are many substantial issues that should be dealt with instead. He may mean the rape and torture of a college girl named Given Grace Cebanico in the University of the Philippines Los Baños last Monday night, and the bullet that was found in her head after she was carried out of the ditch she was found in. It could be the bloody ambush of Polytechnic University of the Philippines vice president for administration Augustus Cezar Wednesday night, and the Manila Police Department’s choice not to investigate his recent choice to turn against PUP president Dante Guevarra in multiple corruption allegations. He may mean the murders of several members of the Philippine National Police, the rise in the poverty indices, or the fact his own president has publicly demonstrated his inability to stand his ground when he announced Ferdinand Marcos would never be buried a hero under his watch, months after he gave the choice to his vice president.

Llamas, however, has forgotten several items in his shopping list of clarifications. He has forgotten that it is in the best interests of his president that he does not create issues by buying his own urban armory. He has also forgotten that the word substantial is relative, and that the Hong Kong hostages who were slaughtered with a machine gun are well aware of the relative merits of high-powered weaponry.

“It mistakenly stated that the PNP is preparing to file a charge of illegal possession of firearms against me. This is incorrect,” Llamas said.

He has forgotten, in his campaign to joke away responsibility with presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda, that the spokesperson of the last president he so violently opposed on the streets of Manila also attempted to shrug away violent opposition to the Ampatuans’ right to carry arms, even after Ampatuan aides were caught carrying machine guns on the side of a hill where the dead had been scraped out. The spokesperson’s name was Lorelei Fajardo, and before she was fired in a moment of face-saving desperation, she said that the fact the Ampatuans “are in this situation” does not mean the government “will turn our backs on them.”

If these incidents do not merit substantial thought for the gentlemen of this administration, perhaps it would be best for the President to remember that faith is a dangerous thing, and that several surface-to-air missiles dug out of the Ampatuan territory should be testimony that even the most useful dogs can bite.

Llamas may believe that threats to his life justify a weapon of roughly the same impact as the two that massacred an island of teenagers in Norway, but it does not take away the fact that Llamas himself is a threat, whether or not he recognizes it. He offers his men as sacrificial lambs, conveniently forgetting it was his responsibility, moral or otherwise, to make sure men who are not licensed to play with his toys should not have keys to his nursery, and that one trigger-happy finger in the middle of Manila traffic can wreak more havoc than an overblown situation.

It is true that the national interest is constantly shifting, and very often dictated by pride or greed or an odd desire to become an Apple endorser, as Roilo Golez appears to be doing in Congress, using public funds to conduct a referendum on Mac vs. PC and making a general fool out of himself legislating “the whole planet’s” adulation for Steve Jobs. Yet this incident seems to be testimony for the government’s allergy to accountability, one that was brutally demonstrated in a public park last year.

So if Llamas is offended by news that he may be under investigation for his gun use, and if the President is offended he was asked if he played video games during the hostage crisis, and if Lacierda is offended, very often, by pieces of column paper, it is necessary to ask why these are the offenses they consider offensive.

We are warned by the government not to take the incident out of proportion. We are told to choose the more substantial issues. We are reminded that the context matters, not the gossip or the drama.

This is written in solidarity with Ronald Llamas, in an attempt to return context and proportion to the incident he so badly wants to forget.