REPORTER: Mark Davis
It may look like a rock concert but the coloured T-shirts give it away. It's an election rally, Philippine style. Throughout the country, presidential candidates are wooing voters for next month's election. On May 10, local, provincial and national elections will be held - all of them against the backdrop of astounding political violence which seems to be strangling politics in this nation. In the Philippines, despite happy appearances, election time is the deadliest time of all.
On the island of Mindanao, electioneering for this man is a sombre task. Toto Mangudadatu is running for governor - a campaign that has already taken a high toll on him and his family. His wife has been murdered and two of his sisters and a couple of weeks ago an attempt was made to kidnap his 11-year-old daughter. He is still running.
TOTO MANUDADATU, CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR: Despite the tragedy happens to my family, I still continue my plan to serve the people of our province.
REPORTER: Do you think that there is still a threat to you, do you think there is a threat to you now?
TOTO MANUDADATU: Yes.
Toto has been left with eight kids aged from 1 to 17 and has adopted some of his dead sister's children as well.
TOTO MANUDADATU: Here is the picture of my wife.
His wife and other relatives were massacred when he announced he was running in the upcoming election for governor of the province of Maguindanao. They were killed on November 23, on their way to lodge Toto's candidacy papers in the capital. Witnesses - associates of the killers - where sending him live updates of what was happening to his family via SMS.
TOTO MANUDADATU: They texted us and - "Your wife was already dead and was beheaded by the culprits." I cried aloud. It is so painful - I can't explain it to anyone. It is so painful.
My daughter!
REPORTER: What do you think of your dad running?
GIGI MANGUDADATU, TOTO'S DAUGHTER: He's a brave man
REPORTER: He certainly is a brave man. Do you think he's too brave?
GIGI MANGUDADATU: Yes.
Gigi Mangudadatu was the main target but 56 others in a convoy with her were killed as well. This atrocity was conducted by a private army belonging to the region's governor, Andal Ampatuan Senior, a close ally of President Arroyo, who had ruled the area for a decade. No-one ever dared stand against him. The killers were led, the prosecution claims, by his son Unsay Ampatuan, the town's serving mayor, who expected to inherit the governor's office from Daddy without any messy elections. For Junior it was, after all, the family's only business.
It was on this hillside in Maguindanao that Toto's wife, relatives and friends - all women - were slaughtered. 32 journalists who accompanied them to report on the filing of the electoral papers were executed beside them. President Arroyo has turned media-shy since the massacre but her spokesperson Gary Olivar sees the killing as nothing but an act of madness...
REPORTER: The killings were of course quite bizarre, but the more disturbing factor there, it seems to me, is that they must have thought that they could get away with this. They believed they could do it -that they were friends with the president - the law had never come in and controlled them, the police were under their control, they could do whatever they liked.
GARY OLIVAR, PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESPERSON: Well, there are two possible reasons for this. One is of course momentary insanity, which I think may be in fact what the Ampatuans, certainly the son, who is primarily implicated here, may be pleading in his own defence or clearly a gross miscalculation of the extent of the influence in Manila. Because clearly, this is not something that anyone could or should tolerate. At the very best it was a gross lack of judgment on their part. And now they have to be held accountable.
REPORTER: I'm just asking, though, on some level, do you feel accountable yourself? These people were being armed. Were you concerned that large amounts of government weapons were...
GARY OLIVAR: Of course I'm concerned about arming forced extenders, OK.
REPORTER: Were you concerned about that before the massacre?
GARY OLIVAR: There is no reason to believe that that concern was not appropriate in a case like that.
Gloria Arroyo can't run for the presidency again. With just days left to serve, her legacy is now in danger of being remembered for little more than a startling number of political killings. Amnesty International maintains that there has been around 1,000 political executions during her presidency and unprecedented growth in the often brutal rule of private militias under the control of local politicians. The US State Department recently also expressed similar concerns and also noted the apparent climate of impunity that surrounds those crimes.
The Maguindano massacre was an extreme, but not an isolated event. Local journalist Ferdie Cabrera would have been in the ill-fated convoy but was called to Manila on another job.
FERDIE CABERA, JOURNALIST: You can see the checkpoint now.
Today, he has organised an army escort to take us to the massacre site.
FERDIE CABERA: We are not assured of our safety any more. So, we ask the guidance of the army to bring us.
It's a deadly business being a journalist here. This recent atrocity aside, one or two are executed in this region each year. And death threats are common.
FERDIE CABERA: Especially those handling critical issues, when they hit politicians, when they hit government officials, that's quite threatening.
We are retracing the journey that Toto's wife took to lodge his election papers - travelling in full daylight along the main highway when she hit this roadblock.
FERDIE CABERA: This is exactly the place, the checkpoint where they were stopped. There were a lot of them at the time. There were a lot of private armies, police, according to the accounts. So this is the place.
REPORTER: But what I don't understand is - why did they stop? Was it private armies or was it police that stopped them?
FERDIE CABERA: The way I understand it, the private armies and the police -
REPORTER: Were together?
FERDIE CABERA: Together.
REPORTER: So the local police were involved?
FERDIE CABERA: Yes.
TOTO MANUDADATU: I answered the phone. The voice was like a trembling voice and she was afraid.
REPORTER: And she said "There's 100..."
TOTO MANUDADATU: More than 100 people. Yeah.
REPORTER: "..stopping on the road"? And Ampatuan Junior?
TOTO MANUDADATU: "Unsay approached me. He slapped me." That was the last word of my wife. I attempted to call her and the phone went off.
REPORTER: The convoy of eight cars and minibuses were directed down this road. At a dead end at the top of the hill they stopped beside two huge pits that had already been prepared for them.
FERDIE CABERA: This hole is the first batch - they dumped the first batch of killed persons and then after that...
REPORTER: But this hole was already dug?
FERDIE CABERA: It was already dug before they were driven here.
REPORTER: They would have had a tractor up here, or something, a backhoe?
FERDIE CABERA: Yeah, there was an excavator here waiting.
REPORTER: Seriously?
FERDIE CABERA: Yeah.
SOLDIER: 22 bodies were found here on this side. On this side we could see two vehicles that were buried.
REPORTER: They tried to bury the vehicles too?
SOLDIER: Yeah.
The digger worked furiously trying to bury bodies and the cars, so furiously its engine burnt out and the killers fled the scene, leaving behind 57 people shot, hacked and beaten to death with such ferocity it beggars belief, and the full video is too gruesome to show. An idea can be gleaned from a billboard that Toto Mangudadatu has erected next to his home.
TOTO MANUDADATU: She has 17 times gunshot wounds and 4 lacerations - all in all it is 21. She was brutally killed. It was so barbaric. According to the NBI examination, the National Bureau of Investigation examination, the lacerations on the private part of my wife was before she was shot by the culprits.
Somewhere between 1 to 200 men were involved in the killing that occurred here. That's a lot of people to be overcome with temporary madness. It seems it wasn't just crazed men at work, but bureaucrats digging graves with equipment from the Public Works Department - Philippine national police either participating or standing by while journalists and a group of innocent women were murdered - killed, it is alleged with army issue weapons and ammunition. Local politics suddenly took on national significance.
Maguindano and the violence it represents has moved centre stage into the presidential election. Four major figures are emerging in the campaign. The government's Gibo Teodoro, former Secretary of Defence, burdened with Arroyo's unpopularity but bolstered by a strong party and government machine. Billionaire businessman Manny Villar, a boy from the slums made good with an upbeat message that's playing well with both business and the poor. Noynoy Aquino, son of Cory Aquino, running on an anti-corruption platform and tapping into the waves of nostalgia for the stability of his mother's rule.
And one wild card - every crisis needs an action hero and the current violence and turmoil is blowing a famous one in from the past. Joseph Estrada, movie star and former president, has taken nearly all the pundits by surprise by launching a campaign to reclaim the presidency. Estrada was ousted from power in 2001 by Gloria Arroyo. Imprisoned from 2001 to 2007 on charges of plunder, it is a bit awkward for him to maintain an anti-corruption platform.
JOSEPH ESTRADA, FORMER PRESIDENT (Translation): Who was the most handsome Filipino president?
CROWD (Translation): Erap!
JOSEPH ESTRADA (Translation): Who did Ai Ai De Las Alas kiss?
Although wobbly on corruption, Estrada has a credible trump card on law and order, and he has some showbiz schtick to boot.
JOSEPH ESTRADA (Translation): Despite the many lovers I have had - I only married one woman. Just one wife, but I am open to all.
But it wasn't these one-liners that surprisingly turned him into a contender. He was the first to state point-blank that he would shut down the militias of local politicians.
JOSEPH ESTRADA: Private armies will never exist because that is illegal. I'll dismantle them immediately. I will order the armed forces of the Philippines, the national police to arrest them, and dismantle them immediately - in my first hour in office.
Free lollies and T-shirts aside, Estrada has a credible track record on security issues and the imposition of national law. When he was president, Mindanao was being overrun by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Estrada launched an all-out war on the MILF. The Filipino army smashed 46 rebel bases and re-established national rule throughout much of the province.
PRESIDENT GLORIA ARROYO: Today our government and the MILF have agreed on a mutual cessation of hostilities.
His successor, Arroyo, entered into numerous cease-fires that never held. She reduced the role of thePhilippines' army while empowering local allies, like the Ampatuans, as deputy sheriffs to fend off the MILF. It's a volatile electorate but right now Noynoy Aquino appears to be the frontrunner.
CROWD: Noynoy now! Noynoy now!
In a country racked with corruption allegations, Aquino is a cleanskin. And for a nation shocked by the rise in political violence, Noynoy's own narrative of pain concerning his own father's assassination is resonating.
NOYNOY AQUINO, CANDIDATE (Translation): We have all been through a lot - I was 23 when I returned to thePhilippines to bury my father. I was 27 when I was shot in the 1987 coup.
The election season kicked off on day one with the death of 57 in Maguindanao. It is estimated another 40 political killings have occurred since then and the election is still not in full swing.
REPORTER: You're no stranger to political violence of course, your father was executed or assassinated here, has anything changed since his death?
NOYNOY AQUINO: Well, yes, initially, but right now there seems to be an impunity. Look at the Maguindanao massacre that you are referring to. Most of us in this country have felt that nobody would even contemplate doing something like that. But here we have a warlord armed by this administration, given total reign over their fiefdom and this is the logical outcome of having that particular policy. That warlord in particular used to travel with a 20-car convoy of fully armed men. I mean, how visible does it need to be for the state to take any concrete action?
At the entrance to the Ampatuan region, Gloria Arroyo still shares the limelight with Unsay Ampatuan, now in prison on murder charges, and his father, the governor, charged with conspiring in the massacre. Bloated on the government's money they delivered literally unbelievable results for Arroyo in presidential elections - 100% of the vote on one rather awkward occasion.
The region is still dirt poor but out of the dust looms the personal palaces of the Ampatuans.
FERDIE CABERA: It's huge, it's new, it's beautiful.
REPORTER: Where is all this money coming from for these new buildings?
FERDIE CABERA: From the government.
GARY OLIVAR: I think you do have unhealthy concentrations of political power in certain parts of the country amongst certain politicians and this, I would imagine, is one of the direct causes of the problem with private armies and political violence that these groups can inflict on others.
REPORTER: What processes do you, as a government, have in place to address that, stop it and bring it under control?
GARY OLIVAR: That is a good question of principle and something that is something that is more appropriately addressed by someone who is on top of the problem.
REPORTER: So we are where?
FERDIE CABERA: In the compound of the Ampatuans.
At the Ampatauns' main palace the Philippines army and police are searching for more weapons. Officially the Ampatuans were only meant to be issued arms while on patrol with the army. But digs in recent weeks have unearthed an extraordinary arsenal of weapons and ammunition - some of it with some rather embarrassing fingerprints. Ampatuan Senior has a personal mosque, conveniently located next to his home.
FERDIE CABERA: This is the one - they dug here.
Today, the lawn outside of it has been dug up in the search for weapons, and Rebecca Ampatuan is not happy.
REBECCA AMPATUAN, GOVERNORS DAUGHTER (Translation): Next time, they shouldn't waste their money on an informer. They should have just killed the informer who saw nothing.
Rebecca, sister of Unsay, daughter of the governor, knows nothing of the massacre. She was attending religious duties in Saudi Arabia when 57 people were being shot and hacked to death up the road.
REPORTER: Is the defence that they were not there at the killings? Did someone else do the killings of the journalists?
REBECCA AMPATUAN: I don't know, I was not around during that incident. I was in Mecca.
REPORTER: In Mecca, OK!
Gibo Teodoro is the government's candidate for president. Until recently, he was secretary of defence, a position he held while the Ampatuans were being secretly armed and enriched, a position he held until just eight days before the Maguindanao massacre. In 2008, while he was defence secretary, the UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights alleged that the Philippine Army was in a "state of denial" over its complicity in the rising number of extra-judicial executions in the Philippines. A state of denial he seems happy to maintain.
REPORTER: Do you take responsibility, though, for the growth of those private armies?
GIBO TEODORO, CANDIDATE: No. No way.
REPORTER: Why not? They grew substantially in your period.
GIBO TEODORO: They did not! That is a disputable fact. They reduced during my time, they did not grow. And it was started as a policy probably a long, long time ago.
REPORTER: Well, when the Maguindanao massacre happened...
GIBO TEODORO: I was not the secretary any more.
REPORTER: Well, you were just not, only....
GIBO TEODORO: That is disputable, you know. They can throw mud at me but it won't stick.
REPORTER: It's not mud, sir, you were defence secretary.
GIBO TEODORO: Yes, but that was a police problem too.
REPORTER: But what interests me though, was that there was a growth of the private armies.
GIBO TEODORO: No, there was not - that's disputable. Come up to the data.
REPORTER: There are 3,000 armed men...
GIBO TEODORO: No, no. Come up with the actual data!
REPORTER: All right, the actual data is the killers were found with weapons from the army...
GIBO TEODORO: Not from the army - only 34 firearms were from the armed forces. So we have to be very specific with the data.
REPORTER: If you empower people, people who aren't competent to accept that power, that's the outcome isn't it?
GIBO TEODORO: Well, sometimes that's the outcome, naturally, but how could I sustain disarmament in the face of 11,000 strong? MILF, separatism on the other side, communist rebels bombing people on the others, with only about 18 infantry battalions in the area.
REPORTER: Well, how will you do it if you become president?
GIBO TEODORO: Slowly, surely. I think the best thing to do is ask all former defence secretaries of whatever political colour, what did they do?
REPORTER: OK, thank you, sir.
Whatever happens at the national level, Toto is pushing on in Maguindanao and has vowed to finish off the private armies and their patrons. If Toto beats the Ampatuans, their whole house of cards will tumble. And Toto probably will win - if he makes it to the election.
REPORTER: You might not make it to May 10.
TOTO MANUDADATU: (SIGHS)
Reporter/Camera
MARK DAVIS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Researchers
MELANIE MORRISON
DONALD CAMERON
Fixers
CAROL CLAUDIO
FERDIE CABRERA
Second Camera
Luis Liwanag
Editors
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
NICK O'BRIEN
Translations/Subtitling
RONALD MANILA
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
It may look like a rock concert but the coloured T-shirts give it away. It's an election rally, Philippine style. Throughout the country, presidential candidates are wooing voters for next month's election. On May 10, local, provincial and national elections will be held - all of them against the backdrop of astounding political violence which seems to be strangling politics in this nation. In the Philippines, despite happy appearances, election time is the deadliest time of all.
On the island of Mindanao, electioneering for this man is a sombre task. Toto Mangudadatu is running for governor - a campaign that has already taken a high toll on him and his family. His wife has been murdered and two of his sisters and a couple of weeks ago an attempt was made to kidnap his 11-year-old daughter. He is still running.
TOTO MANUDADATU, CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR: Despite the tragedy happens to my family, I still continue my plan to serve the people of our province.
REPORTER: Do you think that there is still a threat to you, do you think there is a threat to you now?
TOTO MANUDADATU: Yes.
Toto has been left with eight kids aged from 1 to 17 and has adopted some of his dead sister's children as well.
TOTO MANUDADATU: Here is the picture of my wife.
His wife and other relatives were massacred when he announced he was running in the upcoming election for governor of the province of Maguindanao. They were killed on November 23, on their way to lodge Toto's candidacy papers in the capital. Witnesses - associates of the killers - where sending him live updates of what was happening to his family via SMS.
TOTO MANUDADATU: They texted us and - "Your wife was already dead and was beheaded by the culprits." I cried aloud. It is so painful - I can't explain it to anyone. It is so painful.
My daughter!
REPORTER: What do you think of your dad running?
GIGI MANGUDADATU, TOTO'S DAUGHTER: He's a brave man
REPORTER: He certainly is a brave man. Do you think he's too brave?
GIGI MANGUDADATU: Yes.
Gigi Mangudadatu was the main target but 56 others in a convoy with her were killed as well. This atrocity was conducted by a private army belonging to the region's governor, Andal Ampatuan Senior, a close ally of President Arroyo, who had ruled the area for a decade. No-one ever dared stand against him. The killers were led, the prosecution claims, by his son Unsay Ampatuan, the town's serving mayor, who expected to inherit the governor's office from Daddy without any messy elections. For Junior it was, after all, the family's only business.
It was on this hillside in Maguindanao that Toto's wife, relatives and friends - all women - were slaughtered. 32 journalists who accompanied them to report on the filing of the electoral papers were executed beside them. President Arroyo has turned media-shy since the massacre but her spokesperson Gary Olivar sees the killing as nothing but an act of madness...
REPORTER: The killings were of course quite bizarre, but the more disturbing factor there, it seems to me, is that they must have thought that they could get away with this. They believed they could do it -that they were friends with the president - the law had never come in and controlled them, the police were under their control, they could do whatever they liked.
GARY OLIVAR, PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESPERSON: Well, there are two possible reasons for this. One is of course momentary insanity, which I think may be in fact what the Ampatuans, certainly the son, who is primarily implicated here, may be pleading in his own defence or clearly a gross miscalculation of the extent of the influence in Manila. Because clearly, this is not something that anyone could or should tolerate. At the very best it was a gross lack of judgment on their part. And now they have to be held accountable.
REPORTER: I'm just asking, though, on some level, do you feel accountable yourself? These people were being armed. Were you concerned that large amounts of government weapons were...
GARY OLIVAR: Of course I'm concerned about arming forced extenders, OK.
REPORTER: Were you concerned about that before the massacre?
GARY OLIVAR: There is no reason to believe that that concern was not appropriate in a case like that.
Gloria Arroyo can't run for the presidency again. With just days left to serve, her legacy is now in danger of being remembered for little more than a startling number of political killings. Amnesty International maintains that there has been around 1,000 political executions during her presidency and unprecedented growth in the often brutal rule of private militias under the control of local politicians. The US State Department recently also expressed similar concerns and also noted the apparent climate of impunity that surrounds those crimes.
The Maguindano massacre was an extreme, but not an isolated event. Local journalist Ferdie Cabrera would have been in the ill-fated convoy but was called to Manila on another job.
FERDIE CABERA, JOURNALIST: You can see the checkpoint now.
Today, he has organised an army escort to take us to the massacre site.
FERDIE CABERA: We are not assured of our safety any more. So, we ask the guidance of the army to bring us.
It's a deadly business being a journalist here. This recent atrocity aside, one or two are executed in this region each year. And death threats are common.
FERDIE CABERA: Especially those handling critical issues, when they hit politicians, when they hit government officials, that's quite threatening.
We are retracing the journey that Toto's wife took to lodge his election papers - travelling in full daylight along the main highway when she hit this roadblock.
FERDIE CABERA: This is exactly the place, the checkpoint where they were stopped. There were a lot of them at the time. There were a lot of private armies, police, according to the accounts. So this is the place.
REPORTER: But what I don't understand is - why did they stop? Was it private armies or was it police that stopped them?
FERDIE CABERA: The way I understand it, the private armies and the police -
REPORTER: Were together?
FERDIE CABERA: Together.
REPORTER: So the local police were involved?
FERDIE CABERA: Yes.
TOTO MANUDADATU: I answered the phone. The voice was like a trembling voice and she was afraid.
REPORTER: And she said "There's 100..."
TOTO MANUDADATU: More than 100 people. Yeah.
REPORTER: "..stopping on the road"? And Ampatuan Junior?
TOTO MANUDADATU: "Unsay approached me. He slapped me." That was the last word of my wife. I attempted to call her and the phone went off.
REPORTER: The convoy of eight cars and minibuses were directed down this road. At a dead end at the top of the hill they stopped beside two huge pits that had already been prepared for them.
FERDIE CABERA: This hole is the first batch - they dumped the first batch of killed persons and then after that...
REPORTER: But this hole was already dug?
FERDIE CABERA: It was already dug before they were driven here.
REPORTER: They would have had a tractor up here, or something, a backhoe?
FERDIE CABERA: Yeah, there was an excavator here waiting.
REPORTER: Seriously?
FERDIE CABERA: Yeah.
SOLDIER: 22 bodies were found here on this side. On this side we could see two vehicles that were buried.
REPORTER: They tried to bury the vehicles too?
SOLDIER: Yeah.
The digger worked furiously trying to bury bodies and the cars, so furiously its engine burnt out and the killers fled the scene, leaving behind 57 people shot, hacked and beaten to death with such ferocity it beggars belief, and the full video is too gruesome to show. An idea can be gleaned from a billboard that Toto Mangudadatu has erected next to his home.
TOTO MANUDADATU: She has 17 times gunshot wounds and 4 lacerations - all in all it is 21. She was brutally killed. It was so barbaric. According to the NBI examination, the National Bureau of Investigation examination, the lacerations on the private part of my wife was before she was shot by the culprits.
Somewhere between 1 to 200 men were involved in the killing that occurred here. That's a lot of people to be overcome with temporary madness. It seems it wasn't just crazed men at work, but bureaucrats digging graves with equipment from the Public Works Department - Philippine national police either participating or standing by while journalists and a group of innocent women were murdered - killed, it is alleged with army issue weapons and ammunition. Local politics suddenly took on national significance.
Maguindano and the violence it represents has moved centre stage into the presidential election. Four major figures are emerging in the campaign. The government's Gibo Teodoro, former Secretary of Defence, burdened with Arroyo's unpopularity but bolstered by a strong party and government machine. Billionaire businessman Manny Villar, a boy from the slums made good with an upbeat message that's playing well with both business and the poor. Noynoy Aquino, son of Cory Aquino, running on an anti-corruption platform and tapping into the waves of nostalgia for the stability of his mother's rule.
And one wild card - every crisis needs an action hero and the current violence and turmoil is blowing a famous one in from the past. Joseph Estrada, movie star and former president, has taken nearly all the pundits by surprise by launching a campaign to reclaim the presidency. Estrada was ousted from power in 2001 by Gloria Arroyo. Imprisoned from 2001 to 2007 on charges of plunder, it is a bit awkward for him to maintain an anti-corruption platform.
JOSEPH ESTRADA, FORMER PRESIDENT (Translation): Who was the most handsome Filipino president?
CROWD (Translation): Erap!
JOSEPH ESTRADA (Translation): Who did Ai Ai De Las Alas kiss?
Although wobbly on corruption, Estrada has a credible trump card on law and order, and he has some showbiz schtick to boot.
JOSEPH ESTRADA (Translation): Despite the many lovers I have had - I only married one woman. Just one wife, but I am open to all.
But it wasn't these one-liners that surprisingly turned him into a contender. He was the first to state point-blank that he would shut down the militias of local politicians.
JOSEPH ESTRADA: Private armies will never exist because that is illegal. I'll dismantle them immediately. I will order the armed forces of the Philippines, the national police to arrest them, and dismantle them immediately - in my first hour in office.
Free lollies and T-shirts aside, Estrada has a credible track record on security issues and the imposition of national law. When he was president, Mindanao was being overrun by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Estrada launched an all-out war on the MILF. The Filipino army smashed 46 rebel bases and re-established national rule throughout much of the province.
PRESIDENT GLORIA ARROYO: Today our government and the MILF have agreed on a mutual cessation of hostilities.
His successor, Arroyo, entered into numerous cease-fires that never held. She reduced the role of thePhilippines' army while empowering local allies, like the Ampatuans, as deputy sheriffs to fend off the MILF. It's a volatile electorate but right now Noynoy Aquino appears to be the frontrunner.
CROWD: Noynoy now! Noynoy now!
In a country racked with corruption allegations, Aquino is a cleanskin. And for a nation shocked by the rise in political violence, Noynoy's own narrative of pain concerning his own father's assassination is resonating.
NOYNOY AQUINO, CANDIDATE (Translation): We have all been through a lot - I was 23 when I returned to thePhilippines to bury my father. I was 27 when I was shot in the 1987 coup.
The election season kicked off on day one with the death of 57 in Maguindanao. It is estimated another 40 political killings have occurred since then and the election is still not in full swing.
REPORTER: You're no stranger to political violence of course, your father was executed or assassinated here, has anything changed since his death?
NOYNOY AQUINO: Well, yes, initially, but right now there seems to be an impunity. Look at the Maguindanao massacre that you are referring to. Most of us in this country have felt that nobody would even contemplate doing something like that. But here we have a warlord armed by this administration, given total reign over their fiefdom and this is the logical outcome of having that particular policy. That warlord in particular used to travel with a 20-car convoy of fully armed men. I mean, how visible does it need to be for the state to take any concrete action?
At the entrance to the Ampatuan region, Gloria Arroyo still shares the limelight with Unsay Ampatuan, now in prison on murder charges, and his father, the governor, charged with conspiring in the massacre. Bloated on the government's money they delivered literally unbelievable results for Arroyo in presidential elections - 100% of the vote on one rather awkward occasion.
The region is still dirt poor but out of the dust looms the personal palaces of the Ampatuans.
FERDIE CABERA: It's huge, it's new, it's beautiful.
REPORTER: Where is all this money coming from for these new buildings?
FERDIE CABERA: From the government.
GARY OLIVAR: I think you do have unhealthy concentrations of political power in certain parts of the country amongst certain politicians and this, I would imagine, is one of the direct causes of the problem with private armies and political violence that these groups can inflict on others.
REPORTER: What processes do you, as a government, have in place to address that, stop it and bring it under control?
GARY OLIVAR: That is a good question of principle and something that is something that is more appropriately addressed by someone who is on top of the problem.
REPORTER: So we are where?
FERDIE CABERA: In the compound of the Ampatuans.
At the Ampatauns' main palace the Philippines army and police are searching for more weapons. Officially the Ampatuans were only meant to be issued arms while on patrol with the army. But digs in recent weeks have unearthed an extraordinary arsenal of weapons and ammunition - some of it with some rather embarrassing fingerprints. Ampatuan Senior has a personal mosque, conveniently located next to his home.
FERDIE CABERA: This is the one - they dug here.
Today, the lawn outside of it has been dug up in the search for weapons, and Rebecca Ampatuan is not happy.
REBECCA AMPATUAN, GOVERNORS DAUGHTER (Translation): Next time, they shouldn't waste their money on an informer. They should have just killed the informer who saw nothing.
Rebecca, sister of Unsay, daughter of the governor, knows nothing of the massacre. She was attending religious duties in Saudi Arabia when 57 people were being shot and hacked to death up the road.
REPORTER: Is the defence that they were not there at the killings? Did someone else do the killings of the journalists?
REBECCA AMPATUAN: I don't know, I was not around during that incident. I was in Mecca.
REPORTER: In Mecca, OK!
Gibo Teodoro is the government's candidate for president. Until recently, he was secretary of defence, a position he held while the Ampatuans were being secretly armed and enriched, a position he held until just eight days before the Maguindanao massacre. In 2008, while he was defence secretary, the UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights alleged that the Philippine Army was in a "state of denial" over its complicity in the rising number of extra-judicial executions in the Philippines. A state of denial he seems happy to maintain.
REPORTER: Do you take responsibility, though, for the growth of those private armies?
GIBO TEODORO, CANDIDATE: No. No way.
REPORTER: Why not? They grew substantially in your period.
GIBO TEODORO: They did not! That is a disputable fact. They reduced during my time, they did not grow. And it was started as a policy probably a long, long time ago.
REPORTER: Well, when the Maguindanao massacre happened...
GIBO TEODORO: I was not the secretary any more.
REPORTER: Well, you were just not, only....
GIBO TEODORO: That is disputable, you know. They can throw mud at me but it won't stick.
REPORTER: It's not mud, sir, you were defence secretary.
GIBO TEODORO: Yes, but that was a police problem too.
REPORTER: But what interests me though, was that there was a growth of the private armies.
GIBO TEODORO: No, there was not - that's disputable. Come up to the data.
REPORTER: There are 3,000 armed men...
GIBO TEODORO: No, no. Come up with the actual data!
REPORTER: All right, the actual data is the killers were found with weapons from the army...
GIBO TEODORO: Not from the army - only 34 firearms were from the armed forces. So we have to be very specific with the data.
REPORTER: If you empower people, people who aren't competent to accept that power, that's the outcome isn't it?
GIBO TEODORO: Well, sometimes that's the outcome, naturally, but how could I sustain disarmament in the face of 11,000 strong? MILF, separatism on the other side, communist rebels bombing people on the others, with only about 18 infantry battalions in the area.
REPORTER: Well, how will you do it if you become president?
GIBO TEODORO: Slowly, surely. I think the best thing to do is ask all former defence secretaries of whatever political colour, what did they do?
REPORTER: OK, thank you, sir.
Whatever happens at the national level, Toto is pushing on in Maguindanao and has vowed to finish off the private armies and their patrons. If Toto beats the Ampatuans, their whole house of cards will tumble. And Toto probably will win - if he makes it to the election.
REPORTER: You might not make it to May 10.
TOTO MANUDADATU: (SIGHS)
Reporter/Camera
MARK DAVIS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Researchers
MELANIE MORRISON
DONALD CAMERON
Fixers
CAROL CLAUDIO
FERDIE CABRERA
Second Camera
Luis Liwanag
Editors
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
NICK O'BRIEN
Translations/Subtitling
RONALD MANILA
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN