Tuesday, August 28, 2007 Editorial: Duterte on ‘agaw armas’
THERE'S a need for government to change its policy of allowing security guards of plantations, mining companies and other firms to carry high-powered firearms as this will only serve as magnet for those who want to grab these guns like the New People's Army, Abu Sayyaf, Muslim Islamic Liberation Front and other rebel groups.
This sentiment was aired by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte during last week's joint meeting of the Davao City and regional peace and order councils, the inaugural gathering of the two bodies after the May 14 elections.
Duterte, who heads both CPOC and RPOC, said he plans to personally write Malacañang about the matter this week.
The mayor's proposal makes a lot of sense. As he argued, the blue guards are ostensibly employed by companies to secure properties. The guards are there to earn a living not to pick a fight with aforementioned armed groups who are better armed and with a stronger motivation--mostly political--to use their weapons in the furtherance of the causes they stand for even at the cost of their lives.
When suddenly confronted with a large group of rebels bearing firepower, the initial impulse of the guards is to meekly surrender rather than go down fighting. If this could happen to policemen who, despite their higher responsibility, have on several occasions been disarmed by armed groups without firing a shot, privately employed guards have even less desire to become dead heroes. Ditto with poorly trained paramilitary units, like the Cafgu (formerly called the Civilian Home Defense Force (CHDF).
So many of the assorted firearms in the hands of home-grown rebels were the result of their so-called "agaw armas" (arms-grabbing) activities, and their victims have been private security guards, Cafgus, policemen, soldiers and just plain private individuals.
The mayor's proposal is no knee-jerk reaction to the latest arms-grabbing caper by the NPA on the San Isidro (Davao Oriental) police station, followed by the disarming of a mango plantation guard nearby. Rather, it is borne by experience as city mayor and RPOC/CPOC chair these past two decades.
Another screwball idea Duterte frowns on is the assignment of secret marshals to passenger buses to forestall terror acts aboard. Like blue guards with high caliber guns, these marshals, he said, will be magnets and sitting ducks for rebels and other "agaw-armas" artists.
