Lingig is a small, non-descript town on the eastern shores of Mindanao. Through an accident of geography the municipality sits at the nexus of three provincial borders: Davao Oriental, Agusan del Sur, and its own, Surigao del Sur. Sadly for the small town, such intersecting borders are textbook NPA targets. Both from an organisational AND an operational perspective such areas are almost irresistable to the Maoists. Organisationally, a detachment first encamps on or near such a nexus and in turn is then able to more rapidly expand, or at the very least offer the impression that it is doing so which is strategically valuable in and of its own right. Operationally, PNP, or Philippine National Police, are hemmed in by provincial lines in most cases. Certainly this is true at the municipal and provincial level and in the case of Lingig, where it also sits on a regional border, Caraga (Region 13) and Davao (Region 11), this also applies to PNP regional entities.
Likewise this usually holds true with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, or AFP. Caraga and Davao Regions each fall under different IDs, or Infantry Divisions. Caraga is operationally the provenance of the 4ID, while Davao, since 2008, is under the jurisdictional control of the 10ID. Not only do IDs not share intelligence, they don't share assets and/or manpower as well. The jist of this extremely important dynamic is that an NPA Front encamped in Davao Oriental can launch an attack 5 kilometers away from its encampment, across the border in Surigao del Sur Province, withdraw back into Davao Oriental and pretty much rest assured that the AFP and PNP will spend the next three or four days arguing over operational control and jurisdiction. The PNP doesn't even enter the equation because in terms of the insurgency, it takes a seat far in the rear, a far cry from its predecessor, the PC, or Philippine Constabulary whose bread and butter WAS insurgency.
So, Lingig is destined to be an NPA punching bag for the duration of what is now a 43 year old insurgency, or in its particular case, a 37 year insurgency since the NPA first arrived there in 1975. The August 6th, 2011 attack on Mayor Henry Dano's residential compound wasn't suprising in the least above and beyond the gross incompetence of his two security escorts, Corporal Alrey de Samparado and Private First Class Allan Saban. Both men are intelligence assets attached to the AFP's 75IB, the battalion with operational control over Lingig and its environs. Therefore the two should have been absolutely on top of their game. Instead, on the evening in question, Saban approached the compound's chainlink front gate to ascertain the nature of an unknown visitor presenting himself and asking to see Mayor Dano.
The man, dressed in a Tagalog Barong, the quinessential Filipino shirt popularised by the late Dictator Ferdinand Marcos and now the preferred attire of high ranking PNP and allied personnel. Indeed, the man at the gate informed Saban that he was a team leader with the NBI, or National Bureau of Investigation, the nation's top law enforcement entity sublimated not to the PNP but to the Department of Justice, or DOJ.
Standard Operating Procedure for law enforcement personnel dictates that the lead officer, upon entering a municipality in a new case or operation, first presents himself at the home of that municipality's mayor. A courtesy call if you will, that is extremely problematic on Mindanao given local officials' involvement in all matter of criminality if not actively involved in the insurgency/ies within their domain. Still, this practice is considered de riguer and so Private First Class Saban thought nothing out of the ordinary was taking place.
Of course the NPA has time and again used such ploys to infiltrate important buildings and compounds so that at the very least, since Corporal de Samparado outranked him, Saban should have first checked with his immediate superior, or better yet, informed Mayor Dano of the "visitor" and let him make a very simple phone call to verify the visitor's purported identity and/or role. No, instead Saban cheerfully greeted the visitor at the gate as he unlocked and opened it. Of course the "NBI Agent" was an NPA guerilla, albeit much better dressed than the usual dull green t-shirt and knee-high rubber boots that constitute the NPA "uniform" would allow.
Saban, Corporal de Samparado, and Mayor Dano himself were taken by the guerillas, from the NPA's Front 20, the Conrado Heredia Command of the Northeast Mindanao Regional Committee, or NEMRC, then spirited the three into oblivion. Because of the GPH-NDFP Peace Process and its impasse over the JASIG conundrum*, the captivity lasted three times longer than usual with the three only re-gaining their freedom on October 9th, 2011 (* GPH-NDFP are the acronyms utilised by the "Government of the Philippines" and the "National Democratic Front of the Philippines," the latter being a political umbrella representing the NPA and its political wing, the CPP, or Communist Party of the Philippines. "JASIG," or Joint Agreement on Security and Immunity Guarantees, is a Joint Agreement betwen the GPH and NDFP inked in 1998 in which the GPH guarantees that any and all NDFP "Consultants" directly attached to the Peace Process will remain free from arrest, prosecution, and physical harm. The reality though has been A LOT different and so we have the current impasse in the Peace Process, a stumbling block that first presented itself in May of 2011 over seventeen such "Consultants").
During this longer than normal captivity Mayor Dano, AND his two "security escorts," all gave the typically scripted video presentations in which they admitted being scum of the earth, et cetera and so forth. There is nothing astonishing in this, ALL political captives of the NPA are compelled to do this. Of course it then ruins the careers of the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) upon their return to the loving arms of the AFP but politicians fare much differently. So many Mindanowan mayors go through this unfortunate experience that noone gives it a second thought...except Mayor Dano's arch nemesis Roberto "Jimmy" Luna.
Mr.Luna, co-incidentally serving as Dano's Vice Mayor, has long been the bane of Dano's life. Luna was the Mayor himself until reaching the end of his third three year term in the May of 2010 Elections. He first came to power after murdering his primary competition in the 2001 Election, former Mayor Amerosin V.Onsing, in a Catholic Church no less.
As for how such enemies become tied to one another as mayor and vice mayor, in the Philippine Political System candidates for high office do have running mates BUT each candidate is balloted separately. In other words, one's running mate only enters office IF he or she receives enough individual votes. There is no dual ticket. In Lingig, Dano became Luna's Vice Mayor, and in May, 2010 that dynamic was simply inverted with each man switching office with the other.
Shortly after Dano's release Vice Mayor Luna began telling anyone who would listen that Dano was an NPA collaborator who had gone well beyond the Stockholm Syndrome*-like affectation and into true indoctrination (*Stockholm Syndrome is an actual psychological pathology in which the captive sympathises with and even tacitly supports their captor, names after a group of Swedish captives). In other words, Vice Mayor Luna was tarring Mayor Dano as an NPA cadre. This is of course ironic given Luna's own pedigree. As Mayor, Jimmy Luna was not only also abducted by the NPA, he was taken captive TWICE in less than thirty-six months! In his first capture, on February 6th, 2007, the NPA ALSO infiltrated HIS residential compound in Lingig's Barangay Mandus.
Then, the guerillas from the NPA's Front 20 forced Luna- though he didn't resist AT ALL- into his own SUV and forced him to drive around Lingig, closely followed by two comandeered passenger vans full of guerillas, as they had Luna show them the homes of each of the town's 15 police officers which they recorded for future use. Then, at 5PM they had Luna lead them into the poorly guarded municipal compund where they promptly divested the MPO of its scant arsenal, eleven M16s and six shotguns, before withdrawing with Luna as insurance against immediate armed reprecussions. After releasing their helpful captive that evening inthe town's Barangay Pagtila-an, they withdrew back into the jungle along that provincial border nexus.
Then, on May 5th, 2010, just five days before the 2010 Election in which Luna was running for Vice Mayor, he and his four security escorts were stopped at an NPA checkpoint in the municipality of Monkayo, in the nearby province of Compostela Valley, or ComVal as it is known locally. He and his escorts, two MPO police officers and two soldiers from the 58IB, were on Davao-Agusan National Hiway en route to Davao City to visit Luna's ill son in Davao Doctors Hospital. During election seasons the NPA charges a "tax" to all candidates, a "PTC," or "Permit to
Campaign," though in that last election it had been re-christened "PTW," or "Pay to Win," supposedly assuring the highest paying candidate an electoral victory. Vice Mayor Luna neglected to pay his. Although he ended up winning the Election as Vice Mayor, his family had to cough up P3 Million ($66,000) to the NPA to gain his and his four escorts eventual release days after that victory.
As for calling now-Mayor Henry Dano a "collaborator," during the first abduction, Luna's demeanour was so non-chalant inside the MPO that his own police force filed affadavits accusing their Mayor of being an NPA cadre. According to then PNP Director General Arturo "Art" Lomibao, Luna was "commanding" guerillas! More to the point, then-Mayor Luna actually cried after his second capture, as he described the warmth he felt from the guys and gals of that very same NPA element, Front 20! Instead of flipping the script and pointing all this out, Mayor Dano drew into himself and only left his compound under heavy guard. Refusing to press charges against the NPA, Dano was again accused of harbouring a secret relationship with the Maoists. Instead of reminding folks that Luna hadn't charged the NPA either, in either of his two captivities, Dano simply noted, "I will just forget about it," admitting though that his "heart is still pounding in fear." When pressed on his reluctance to file charges Dano asked, "If I filed a case, will you protect me? Will you be able to give me justice and will you be able to give me security?"
One needs to understand that like a fair number of municipalities in Eastern Mindanao, Lingig is under a parallel government implemented by the NPA. AFP and PNP officials always downplay this by sticking to a story that has the NPA devoid of any strategy above and beyond reaping a profit through its "Revolutionary Taxes" which according to this narrative, merely serve to enrich high ranking NPA and CPP personalities. Because Lingig is a poor municipality devoid of any lucrative logging and mining tenements the NPA only uses the town as a sort of "way station" as it moves to and fro to richer municipalities. Of course this is propaganda aimed at the naïve amd gullible. In the words of Lingig's Municipal Police Office Director, Inspector Ignacio Serrano, "(We are) so undermanned and (under) armed. The rebels roam here freely. They even play basketball during festivities but we cannot go after them." In the meantime he has had a tall razorwire topped chainlink fence constructed around the already walled municipal compound, and is considering sandbagging around that perimeter fence AND THEN building a second razorwire topped chainlink fence. Perhaps redundancy will protect his MPO and the town hall, nothing else has.
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