Overkill

The latest word on the furor surrounding President Aquino’s political adviser Ronald Llamas’ cache of firearms is that his permit to carry firearms outside residence has been revoked by the Philippine National Police. This comes on top of the announced dismissal of Llamas’ two aides, which figured in the vehicular accident that unwittingly laid bare the portable armory.

Case closed? Malacañang and Llamas desperately hope so. The jokey, wink-wink reactions that have characterized the government’s response to this troubling fiasco involving one of Mr. Aquino’s Cabinet members reveals an impulse not to address the issue in a sober, forthright way, but simply to wave it off, diminish it for the trifling matter that the Palace thinks it is. Witness another disgraceful performance by presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda who, when asked to comment on the revocation of Llamas’ license, quipped, “Then he can no longer carry (the firearm). Obviously when you revoke a permit to carry, moving forward he cannot be allowed to carry outside the premises (of his house).”

Lacierda was described in news reports as laughing when he uttered those remarks. He should have been laughing at himself, for the utter idiocy of his words. “Moving forward he cannot be allowed to carry outside the premises…”? Are presidential spokespersons now reduced to this, sputtering out the bloody obvious while unwilling—perhaps because unable—to comprehend and talk about the larger implications of this scandal?

Let us appreciate the multiple ironies in Llamas’ case. Before his Malacañang appointment, he was president of the militant leftist group Akbayan. Had he remained in that position and Akbayan not allied itself with the Liberal Party during Mr. Aquino’s presidential run, it’s not farfetched to imagine Llamas as among the first firebrands who would have dashed before the TV cameras to fulminate against any so-called presidential adviser found to have stashed a small arsenal of high-powered firearms. In January this year, asked why the President chose him for his team, Llamas said: “We both took part actively in major battles against then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. We shared the same criticism of the climate of impunity (in the Arroyo administration).”

It’s only October, or 10 months later, and Llamas seems to have forgotten that the “climate of impunity” he claimed a heroic opposition to had its roots in the widespread violence and criminality spawned by the unchecked, often politically motivated proliferation of firearms in the country. The Maguindanao massacre, to take just one instance, and from where that inadequate phrase gained its most horrific currency, was consummated with the use of the Ampatuan family’s vast stockpile of arms, many of which empowered its private army. Many more were buried, undoubtedly for some future use, and hidden from public view—not unlike Llamas’ hitherto unknown firearms.

At the time the guns were discovered, Llamas was in Geneva, Switzerland, reportedly attending the executive meeting of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. There’s another irony. How his counterparts from other countries must be raising their eyebrows now, with the Philippine government’s foremost representative to the cause of world refugees—victims of guns, war, violence, displacement mostly—being revealed as himself a hoarder of armaments.

So Llamas has received “credible threats” to his life, and all the guns are registered. How many weapons does one person need to defend himself? Aside from an AK-47, Llamas has an M-16 and three short firearms. It’s no exaggeration to call that overkill. And while it’s obvious that he’s fond of guns (Llamas is a shooting buddy of the President), a more reasonable assumption is that Llamas has imbibed the very impunity that power brings, and which he must now express via the sheer force at his disposal. Consider: in his long years as an activist, when he was in constant danger from harassment and aggression by both the military and Akbayan’s ideological foes in the Left, was Llamas ever able to amass this number of guns to protect himself?

He could do so now, only because he is in power. Distressingly, his boss sees nothing wrong with that, preferring dismissive asides over an authoritative reassurance to the country that gun control laws apply to everyone, presidential adviser or not. Llamas’ case brings to mind, and reinforces, two political verities: One, power corrupts. Two, power grows out of the barrel of a gun.