Waiting game

It has only been a week since President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao. The incident in Marawi City forced him to cut short his visit to Moscow, Russia.

That must have pissed him off. After all, it was his chance to cozy up to Vladimir Putin, the poster boy of iron-fisted leaders.

But no, misguided members of the Maute group had to lay siege to the capital of Lanao del Sur. That it was because an attempt to serve a warrant of arrest against Isnilon Hapilon, who was reportedly designated as point man of the Islamic State in this neck of the woods, had failed miserably is now beside the point.

As far as I know, Hapilon, who has a US$5-million bounty on his head, is still at-large.

Still, no one, I mean, no one thought Duterte would go ballistic. Least of all, the Maute group.

As critics of the President would like to point out, the government didn’t even impose martial rule on the island when a faction of the Moro National Liberation Front tried to raise the flag of the Bangsamoro Republik at the Zamboanga City Hall on Sept. 9, 2013.

That incident displaced more than 100,000 people, destroyed some 10,000 homes, and killed more than 160 persons.

But that was under the administration of Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.

You know, the commander-in-chief who, instead of rushing to condole with families of the 44 personnel of the Special Action Force who were massacred in Mamasapano, visited a car factory in Luzon. The very same chief of state who smiled when he learned that eight Hong Kong nationals were killed after policeman Rolando Mendoza hijacked a tourist bus in Luneta because he found the whole thing “absurd.”

Duterte can be crass sometimes--oh, who am I kidding—most of the time. He can make me cringe with his bombastic pronouncements, or make me want to cover my ears when he hurl invectives at the church and the pope, but he can also be very decisive… which was what was needed last week.

And so the whole country was caught off-guard when the President dropped the bombshell.

Members of the Maute group are probably still muttering “oh no he di’int” under their breath while being pursued by government troops.

As for the President, he knew he would be getting a lot of flak when he declared the thing-that-must-not-be-declared.

Most of the brouhaha is coming from the National Capital Region, hundreds of kilometers from violent skirmishes and constant threats posed by bandits funded by adherents of fundamentalist Islam.

The people in Mindanao have been mum. They know what’s at stake because it is happening in their backyard.

If only martial law could get rid of the Maute group once and for all.