By Dioscoro Nuñez III
Sixteen years after the Maguindanao massacre, the nation still carries the phantom of gunfire, throbbing like a stubborn wound. That day was not yet a closed chapter but a spectre knocking at our conscience. Fifty‑eight lives were stolen in a single act of political violence, thirty‑two of them journalists whose pens were silenced by bullets. The brutality shocked the world, yet its roots lay not only in weapons but in corruption. A poison coursing through governance, feeding political dynasties, patronage, and institutions too compromised to resist.
The convictions in 2019 against members of the Ampatuan clan were hailed as historic, but justice remains fractured. Some suspects still roam free, slipping through cracks in the law, shielded by influence and weak enforcement, especially when there was a shift in priorities or resources became too thinly stretched to pursue fugitives with urgency. This unfinished truth reveals a deeper terror. Corruption that bends institutions, delays justice, and teaches the people that accountability can be bought, bartered, or denied.
That terror is not confined to Maguindanao. It persists today, stitched into the nation’s skin like scabies. Corruption wears many masks. We have heard of contracts fattened with lies, projects that vanish like smoke, votes bought like trinkets, dynasties enthroned like monarchs in a republic. It manifests in laws applied swiftly against the powerless but sluggishly against the powerful. It erodes trust, leaving citizens to believe government serves itself, not them. Corruption kills. Sometimes with bullets, more often with silence.
The massacre was spectacular in its brutality, but corruption inflicts wounds every day. When public funds are siphoned off, the poor are left with schools that crumble, hospitals that thrum with absence, and roads that remain impassable as if progress itself were barricaded. When dynasties monopolize power, marginalized communities are denied representation. When justice is delayed, the poor learn that the law is not their shield but a blade turned against them. The massacre’s brutality may have been exceptional, but its roots, such as corruption, impunity, and inequality, are the same forces that perpetuate poverty, hunger, and fear in daily life.
Sixteen years on, and the Philippines is not only remembering Maguindanao. It is imagining what must come after. Memory becomes a blueprint, grief becomes resolve, and the massacre becomes a marker of what we should refuse to repeat. Their memory calls us to build a future where governance is transparent, institutions are trusted, and justice is lived daily in the dignity of ordinary lives.
The ghosts of Maguindanao will not rest until corruption is buried with them. The truth is not only about the past. It burns in the present like an ember that should not be extinguished, and the memory becomes the flame of resistance.
