Ransom or Bounty?

Written on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 5:52 pm | by Nick

In my point of view, and it is almost sacrileges to say this at the moment, to pay Ransom for Ces Drilon and the two other men that are still being held is to “play into” the strategy of these terrorists and scumbags. Before I dive deeper into this commentary, and I promise to be as brief as I can, here’s a video, which introduces my point clearly, from Mel Gibson’s movie Ransom, where, “where Mel Gibson goes on TV and says he will not pay the ransom for his son and instead will pay the money to whoever catches his kidnappers.”

Fellow writer Butch has contemplated the same problem that is being faced right now, whether ransom should be paid or not. In this case, he is certain that it will be paid, and I agree with him fully.

Since 2000, there have been around 20 kidnappings, and all have been negotiated by paying a ransom. And reports that military officials are in collusion with these bandits don’t help either.

And the fact that such ransoms are paid while the official government stand is to not pay for any ransom request is another reason why such kidnappers are still emboldened to do so.

Now, the thought of putting a bounty on these scumbags, this came from fellow blogger, Dean Jorge Bocobo. Thus the video that started this commentary.

It’s easy for me to say this of course, because those who were kidnapped, Ces included, are not my immediate family, nor are they even individuals that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. But to look at this at an objective level, I’m sure Rom would be proud of me at this moment, is to realize that a bounty on these kidnappers is the only way to go.

They have already paid P2 million in ransom for one of the abducted, calling the ransom “board and lodging fee”, and thus the domino effect continues. When do we finally say to ourselves that enough is enough, and that future victims must be protected as much as the victims of today?

If we had only started down the path of actually implementing a no ransom policy maybe back in 2000, would those 20 kidnapping even have taken place? I’m sure some, but a great decrease in that number would definitely have been made.

This is now a balancing act. To protect victims, to adhere to policy, and to exterminate these terrorists. I’m just glad that I’m not in the position to make that decision today. Sometimes the hardest decisions to make are the decisions that have to be made. This rings true for many policies in government, and this rings true for the kidnapping in Sulu.

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About The Author: Nick is a passionate Filipino, and a political junkie. His personal blog is at Tingog - The Voice of The Filipino. He is the founder and Editor not Chief of FilipinoVoices.com. He has been blogging since 2006.

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Comments

4 Responses to “Ransom or Bounty?”

  1. noemi on June 18th, 2008 9:33 pm

    Off-topic, I am wondering if Filipino Voices is a commentary blog or news reporting. I see Ding G. Gagelonia posting basically on news updates. I can easily find news in Inquirer or ABS CBN . I am looking for commentaries here or voices of Filipinos. Is this just temporary because of Ces Drilon’s kidnapping?

  2. the jester-in-exile on June 18th, 2008 9:36 pm

    i won’t speak for nick, noemi, but my take is that yes, this is probably temporary.

    (press release on that, nick? hahaha!)

  3. Nick on June 19th, 2008 5:17 am

    @Noemi @Jester,

    I have no illusion of becoming a reincarnation of mainstrem media, nor do I wish it upon my worst enemy.

    In that case, you should know my sentiment and our goal is to spur on dialogue, debate, and discussion.

    I have tremendous respect for Ding Gagelonia, and he knows that our main goal is to tackle the issues. In our case, the issue of terrorism and news embargo was very much related ot Ces Drilon’s kidnapping, and thus a further understanding of this whole scenario prompted Ding to introduce news style journalism into FV. And for this, I think his contribution has been immense.

    In any case, this has been exactly that, a special case. Ding is definitely one that can also dish out commentary, albeit with a little background, I guess we just can’t take the journalist away from the blogger.

    But if you judge from his previous entries over at Midfield, he has more than enough commentary for everyone to digest.

    And so, I cannot be a defender of Ding, nor an apologist, but just an observer that what he contributes is another avenue towards discussion of issues, whether he writes something in line with “news” or “commentary”, the situation will dictate which is which. In this last week, “news” pervaded, and I am confident, we can see more of his “commentary” in the weeks to come.

  4. jonas on June 20th, 2008 7:20 am

    Yes, it’s a ransom and has been a “cottage-industry” in that part of the country. The sad thing was the gov’t. seems to be oblivious about it.

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