Blood in Her Hands

Yesterday morning I took part in a media forum on how journalists can better report on Mindanao. The forum, or media dialogue, zeroed in on the aborted Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (AD) which triggered the ongoing shooting war, albeit limited at present to certain areas of Mindanao, between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government.

 

The dialogue also examined the media’s reporting on the conflict and how this exacerbated the distrust and misunderstanding between the different peoples of Mindanao regarding the MOA-AD. Among the speakers of the dialogue was Professor Rudy Rodil, the vice chairman of the dissolved government peace panel.

 

In the forum, Professor Rodil said the job of disseminating information on the MOA-AD was not theirs alone and in fact they conducted continuous consultations at the local level in the course of the peace talks with the MILF. Talks with the MILF, in fact, started in 1997, one year after the government concluded a peace deal with the Moro National Liberation Front(MNLF) so local consultations have been going on and off for the past eleven years.

 

On this the Professor is right. Any settlement with the MILF is political in nature and while the panel may have been tasked to negotiate on the government’s behalf, in the end any agreement would have to bear the imprimatur of the President. It must therefore follow that, in explaining the MOA-AD to the various shareholders, media included,  the Executive should have taken the lead.

 

It can be argued, and in fact the point has already been made countless times by various personalities, that the President lacks the political capital to push for the acceptance of such a momentous document, especially since a final peace agreement would necessitate changing certain provisions of the Constitution. There is simply so much distrust on the part of the political opposition, civil society groups and even among members of the media for the President.

 

Nevertheless a concerted effort should have been made as the issue of a just peace with the Bangsamoro people is more important than the intramurals of the political elite. The problem was, there never was any coherent message coming from the President regarding the context of the MOA-AD and how this may pave the way for an end to the conflict with the MILF. Instead, what emanated from the Executive was a garbled message, a fact that was immediately exploited by politicians with their own selfish vested interests.

 

What is even worse is, with the dissolution of the government peace panel, there is an impression that the President is leaving the panel members to take all the heat, or out in the cold as the case may be, as if she was clueless to what the panel was doing all these years.

 

Then, too, the Executive allowed itself to be boxed into a corner by the national media when it could have seized the initiative and explained the nuances of the document to the same. It has always been an admitted shortcoming on the part of the national media to indulge in stereotyping Mindanao stories. That is a sad fact—the national media tends to, at best, sensationalize the periodic violence, or threats of violence, in Mindanao.   

 

I also remember reading about how the peace process is being supposedly used to propel the ChaCha Train days before the President even announced the breakthrough in the peace negotiations with the MILF during her State of the Nation Address last July. Why the President never bothered to explain herself in clear, unequivocal language is beyond me. Instead what we got was often conflicting explanations from various high officials of government.

 

In the end the inevitable happened—media hyped the many incendiary statements from politicians, there was confusion with regard to just what the MOA-AD is all about, and rogue commanders of the MILF attacked civilian communities. And even now, we are still picking up the pieces; we are still bearing the consequences of a peace deal gone sour.

 

 

Now Pacquiao Must Fight Marquez

Juan Manuel Marquez’s annihilation of Joel Casamayor Saturday sends a strongly worded challenge to Manny Pacquiao, a challenge Pacquiao must accept if the Pacman intends to truly carve out a place for himself among the greatest fighters in the history of boxing.

 

In bulking up to lightweight, Pacquiao chose to fight David Diaz, considered as the weakest of the lightweight champions. Marquez, on the other hand, fought Casamayor, considered the linear champion of the division. 

 

And as everybody knows, too, Marquez bulked up to lightweight to chase after Pacquiao who abandoned the 130-pound division after squeezing past Marquez last March.

 

Pacquiao-Marquez II, billed “Unfinished Business,” was a fight that could have gone either way with neither fighter dominating the other. And, if anything, boxing is a sport that is in essence about beating the other guy into submission.

It is a sport about pitting one man’s skill, one man’s courage and heart, against the other. But sadly, boxing is also undeniably a business.

 

Pacquiao has a date with the Golden Boy in December. But the fight with Oscar de la Hoya is more about the money, the mega money, than anything else. It is an anomaly. Entertaining for sure but the disparity in size and weight between Pacquiao, who started his professional boxing career two pounds below the junior flyweight limit of 108 pounds, and de la Hoya is such that the fight can only be called a circus of some sort.

 

Whether Pacquiao can fight effectively at 147 pounds, after putting on an additional 12 pounds above his fighting weight, is doubtful. The same can be said  for de la Hoya who will have to fight at 147 pounds after competing as a junior middleweight and above since 2001.

 

Neither Pacquiao nor de la Hoya will therefore be at his fighting best for the December 6 fight which is now being dubbed as the “Dream Match.”

 

In contrast, a third fight with Marquez is the only logical fight left for Pacquiao after de la Hoya.  Pacquiao has said that his fight with the Golden Boy is the first of his last three fights as he intends to retire from boxing  in time for the 2010 elections.

 

Aside from the de la Hoya fight, Pacquiao is also eying another mega-buck fight with Ricky Hatton in an attempt, perhaps, to shore up his campaign kitty. Whether there is any wisdom in squandering his hard earned money to win a political seat is not for us to say. What Pacquiao does with his money is his own business. But there is little doubt that money is becoming a big factor in Pacquiao’s choice of who to fight.   

 

Then, too, Marquez is not getting any younger. Marquez is only six months younger than de la Hoya who, at 35, is now considered way past his prime. If Pacquiao dilly-dallies further in fighting Marquez, he may lose his chance in validating his crown as the best pound for pound fighter.

 

After winning his fight with Casamayor, Marquez once again issued the oft-repeated challenge for a third do-or-die battle. Marquez has certainly gone to a lot of trouble to bait Pacquiao to a third outing, even going as far as to come to the Philippines just to press for a third fight.

 

But will Marquez’s decisive win over the previously undefeated Casamayor finally make the fighter in Pacquiao listen? Or will Pacquiao become another de la Hoya who is first and foremost a businessman?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martial Law Baby

Like many others born between the years 1972 to 1986, I am what they call a  Martial Law Baby.  I do not really know what that means except, perhaps, that my generation is nearing middle age.

 

It is just a tag, a means of identifying the generation I belong to. It does not hold any meaning other than to differentiate my generation from, say, Generation X.

 

When Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in September 21, 1972, he ushered in one of the darkest chapters of Philippine history. Curiously, courtesy perhaps of my relatively sheltered provincial middle class upbringing, I have no traumatic recollection of the Martial Law years. But I do remember feeling Marcos’ omnipresence in my childhood.

 

I remember studying the origins of the Filipino in history books and such and seeing a likeness of Marcos as Makisig, the mythical first Filipino, and Imelda Marcos as Maganda, the first Filipina. I remember the earliest books on reading and writing always featured Pepe and Pilar and of course Bantay, the loyal mongrel. It was always Pepe this, Pilar that and “run, Bantay, run.”

 

I remember having to line up for nutribun. In the school that I went to it was not given for free. I remember having to buy my ration of the so called nutrient-filled, rock-hard bun for twenty five centavos. It was brownish and sweet and sometimes you’d find little insects mixed with the flour but once you dunked it in Lem-o-Lime it was not so bad.

 

I remember we were all agog with Voltes Five, Daimos, Mazinger-Z. Like kids of today, we were crazy over video games. There were no Play Station nor X Box back in the day so you’d have to go to Ororama in Cogon where the video machines were and line up for tokens. That or if you were a little older you’d go straight to the section where they sell Lord Wally, swipe a little into your palm, style your hair and then wait for the girls from Lourdes.

 

Marcos eventually outlawed video games as it was becoming too popular among school children. We felt this a terrible injustice then. We could never understand how playing speed racer could corrupt our minds.

 

I was in grade five when Ninoy was shot in the Manila International Airport. The assassination apparently triggered mass protests in Manila. There were only two channels on TV then, Channel 9 and Channel 12. The late Harry Gasser was the guy who read the news for Channel 9 but I do not remember watching all the bad news from Manila. The news was of course sanitized by the censors but as far as we were concerned the murder of Ninoy never upstaged our interest in the space adventures of Buck Rogers or of the Starship Enterprise.

 

Maybe our generation got tagged with the wrong label. We were born during Martial Law but the tag always sounded a little wrong, as wrong as a jar of sandwich spread labeled as peanut butter. None of us ever marched in the First Quarter Storm, nor in the many other marches and public demonstrations against Marcos. None of us ever died fighting the dictatorship, none of us even knew something was terribly wrong with the country. At best we were post Martial Law, the generation that marched post-Marcos, if at all.

 

But there is no getting away. People, when seeing our birthdates, will always conclude,”Ah so you’re a Martial Law baby.” And that’s just it—we were still babies during Martial Law, dead to the affairs of the world, carefree and preoccupied only with the silly games of children.

 

And always, at least on my part, there is that nagging feeling that our generation missed it’s turn manning the front. Our grandfathers fought the great war, our fathers and brothers fought Marcos. As for us, there is that silly little voice at the back of our heads that says we really have fought no one.

 

We are Martial Law babies. Perhaps now is our time to finally start fighting for causes greater than ourselves.

 

 

Heroes

I recently stumbled upon an article in Newsweek about United States Republican candidate for President John McCain. Among the many revelations about the man is McCain’s curious choice of his personal hero, Robert Jordan, a fictional character and the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel For Whom The Bell Tolls.

 

I do not particularly care for McCain. Nor for Obama for that matter. Like the rest of the world, I view the upcoming US elections from a spectator’s point of view although, like the rest of the world, I am keenly aware that the results of the coming US elections affects all of us, regardless of where we live.

 

I say McCain’s personal hero is curious because the fictional Robert Jordan is, above all, an idealist. Hemingway’s protagonist is a fictional American volunteer in the International Brigades which fought the fascist forces under Generalisimo Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Robert Jordan is a believer in great causes, so much so that he is willing to die for them. And Robert Jordan in fact does die at the end of the novel.

 

Personal heroes speak greatly of the mettle of the men that hold them. Heroes, unlike the passing interest on the idols of our youth, help define the lives we try to live. If for example we hold the Christians’ Jesus or the Muslims’ Muhammad as heroes, then it must follow that we would try to live our lives as closely to those that we hold in high regard. Thus it is always interesting to know just who our leaders look up to.

 

But I can not remember the subject of personal heroes of our candidates ever generating the same amount of interest during our own elections. We do not seem to particularly care who they look up to just as long as they project an agreeable image. Here it is not so much the man, or the woman as the case may be, but the image. It is not so much the stuff they are made of but how they are perceived in public.

 

Take the example of Joseph Erap Estrada. He became President chiefly because of his having played hero roles in movies. Erap passed himself off as the real deal, the uncompromising good guy, the man who always fought on the side of ordinary folks. Never mind if it was all make believe.

 

This is rather unfortunate because, if anything, we are again being set up. Our own national elections are still a good year and eight months away but already politicians coveting the juiciest posts are mounting their respective campaigns, albeit unofficially.

 

“Mr. Palengke”, “Sipag at Tiyaga”, “Mr. Clean,” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Radio, TV, and print ads are all buzzing with catch phrases, words designed purposefully to paint a certain image; in advertising lingo—packaging.

 

And candidates are spending good money, too, buying airtime,  paying for outsized posters publicizing their advocacies, purchasing ad space detailing their opinion on pressing issues.

 

Of course it is still too early in the game to say this is as good as it gets. We can always demand more; we can always say we deserve better than this.

 

Or is it now too late to trade form for substance? Especially since, from the looks of things, the pickings for quality candidates are getting slimmer and slimmer?

For all our sakes, I certainly hope not.

 

Funny Songs

I was driving my daughter to school the other day when my daughter said something that made me pause. A song I particularly liked was playing on the stereo and she asked, ever so sweetly,”Do you like listening to funny songs Papa?”

 

I have never really found the songs I listen to amusing. I am a child of the 80s and 90s. But as far as I can tell, none of the songs of that “era” were funny.

 

I mean, does anybody find Sting “funny”? Or Peter Gabriel? Does anybody crack up when listening to the Eraserheads, the penultimate Pinoy band of my generation?

 

I have never thought myself old, even when I started sleeping with a pillow tucked under my thighs. I have chronic back pain, you see. Not too long ago I discovered I slept better this way. But old? No way.

 

Instead of seeing it as an unmistakable sign that the old engine is breaking down, I thought of it more as the natural effects of perhaps a nasty spill, even when I hadn’t ridden my bike for weeks.

 

I’ve given up jogging. My knees can’t take the constant pounding. And I have a collapsed arch from my days playing soccer so I have pretty much given up on running as exercise. Besides, why jog when one can cycle?

 

As I write these my ankles are throbbing. Like Hell. Several months ago my knees acted up. It got so bad that I had to use a golf club to get around. I can’t walk decent but not once did I thought of using a cane. Canes are for patsies. Golf clubs, well, that’s another story. And good thinking , don’t you agree?

 

The  doctor said I must have gout. I can’t have gout. Only old people have them. Not me. There is wisdom to second opinions after all.

 

But I bought the painkillers and the Colchicine tablets just the same. No need limping around when access to years and years of medical research is on hand, you understand.

 

They say the only way to age gracefully is to embrace it and to sort of roll with the punches. But how can one, to use a cliché, age like wine when one can’t even walk decent? I’m not even sure I can use the golf club trick again as my daughter seems to have gotten wiser.

 

Eureka!!

 

The secret to aging gracefully? Colchicine. And that’s with the second opinion.

 

 

Politics As Usual

Now that Malacanang has said that it is setting aside the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front(MILF), the sound of war drums in Manila seems to have suddenly fallen silent. Now that there is no more serious talk of amending the Constitution from the Palace, Manila politicians seem to have calmed down, like shrieking boys appeased with candy.

 

Gone are the hysterics. Gone are the high-pitched cries of treason and dismemberment of the Republic. Gone, too, is the urgency.

 

President Arroyo has agreed to give the Senate a direct hand in drafting a new peace accord with the MILF. So now we are back to zero. Now we can all say goodbye to the prospect of peace with the MILF, at least till the elections in 2010 are over. It is now politics as usual in Manila, war as usual in Mindanao.

 

Meanwhile, civilian militias are rising up in Mindanao, thanks to Secretary Puno. The Ilaga, a ghoulish outfit with a litany of atrocities to its name, has slithered its way from the dark past and into the light of the present.

 

Internal refugees are flocking to evacuation centers; casualties, combatants as well as civilians, are rising.  We are, after all, now shooting instead of talking. But beyond the usual, feeble rhetoric calling for restraint, the silence from Manila is deafening.

 

The headlines have moved on; the war is now yesterday’s story. Mindanao is now yesterday’s story. Now, our politicians can again focus their energies to the coming political intramurals. Never mind the dead and the dying.

 

What else is new?

 

 

 

The Lord Of The Ring

I can not begrudge Manny Pacquiao for wanting to fight Oscar de la Hoya, the Golden Boy of boxing. But for the life of me, I can not understand why a great fighter like de la Hoya would choose to take the easy way out and fight Manny for his swan song.

 

For Manny, well as they say the man’s got to eat. But for a future Hall of Famer who has given fight fans some of the more memorable fights in the history of boxing, de la Hoya is chickening out by fighting a much much smaller fighter, even if that fighter happens to be the best pound for pound boxer today.

 

Consider the tale of the tape: Oscar stands 5’10.5’’, Manny, when he’s got his socks on, 5’6.5”. Oscar weighs 150 pounds (as of May 2008 when he fought Steve Forbes) but fights at 154 pounds. Manny, on the other hand, has just had one fight at 135 pounds. And at 73 cm, Oscar enjoys a reach advantage of a kilometric 6 centimeters.

 

To emerge a winner, Manny Pacquiao needs only to do one thing—show up. He does not need to beat up Oscar, a long shot in any case. He does not need to win. Nor even score a draw, another long shot. If, by the last round, Manny happens to be still standing and trading punches, then he would have won. Again. Even without the rematch.

 

By contrast, Oscar, just by picking Manny, has already lost.  Forget all the talk about Oscar wanting to fight only the best pound for pound fighter.  Forget even all his talk about avenging the Mexicans. In fact by picking Manny, Oscar has already done the Mexicans a great disservice. Whichever way you look at it, the match up looks every bit the spectacle of the big bully picking on the smallest kid in the school yard. Even if the smallest kid happens to pack some serious punching power.

 

In any case there are no Mexicans, Filipinos, or Canadians in boxing. There are only individual fighters, devoid of nationality, devoid of race.

 

If the fight were in the context of the movie Lord of the Rings, would Aragorn pick on, forgive the comparison, Frodo? I don’t think so. In fact, in the movie as well as the book, Aragorn makes it a habit to stride to the battlefield and look for the biggest, baddest troll. Orcs he leaves to men of lesser stature, to dwarves and elves. And, of course, to Frodo and the Hobbits.

 

If Oscar were Aragorn, to take the argument further, he would have chosen to fight Margarito, the biggest, baddest troll of his weight class. That would have been boxing. In its purest, most perfect form. But as we have now seen, Oscar is not Aragorn even if he has reigned as the Golden Boy for the longest time.

 

As for Frodo? The book and the movie tell us he vanquished the Lord of the Ring himself. But then again, that’s just fantasy.

 

 

Losing Sight Of Peace For Mindanao

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo finally went out and said it. Federalism, the President said Monday, is “the way to move forward.”

 

But instead clearing up issues, the admission that her administration is once again seeking charter change to accommodate a peace pact with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has only resurrected old and nagging fears that she wants to stay beyond 2010. And the President has only herself to blame if people are suspicious.

 

A constitutional amendment is needed before any peace deal with the MILF can be consummated, that much is obvious. By all intents and purposes, the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) is federal in nature, thus the need for, to use Secretary Jesus Dureza’s term, a “surgical amendment.”

 

But there lies the problem. Instead of coming out and saying unequivocally just what it wants, the President is giving the impression that everything is still up in the air. Instead of laying all her cards on the table, the President is giving the impression that she is keeping an ace up her sullied sleeve.

 

Secretary Dureza was quoted in The Daily Tribune as saying that “the best way in resolving the conflict in Mindanao is to go through a Constituent Assembly.” He went on to clarify the statement saying this “is not yet the official position of government.”

 

But of all people, Secretary Dureza must know that everything he says reflects, if not official policy, at least what is in the mind of the President. He is afterall, the alter ego of the President. The concept of convening Congress into a Constituent Assembly to amend the Constitution ran into stiff opposition two years ago because, among other things, politicians can not be trusted to forego vested interests. Just imagine, if you were a congressman into your last term and, by a sudden stroke of luck, you were allowed to change the Constitution, wouldn’t you lift term limits so you can again run for office? Turning Congress into a Constituent Assembly was discredited then as it is now. So why is Secretary Dureza again sounding out the concept?

 

To make matters worse, Secretary Dureza seems to be enlisting support for Charter change by implying that government has the backing of noted constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ. Secretary Dureza said  government negotiators had sought the advice of Fr. Bernas on how to implement the initialed memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD)  with the MILF.

 

True, Fr. Bernas had said publicly that there is nothing to worry about with regard to the MOA-AD. But what the good Secretary failed to mention is that Fr. Bernas has been consistent in saying that the way to Charter change is through a Constitutional Convention in which delegates are elected.

 

Critics of the MOA-AD between the government and the MILF therefore can not  be faulted for suspecting that something sinister must be in the works especially since government seems determined to ink a deal with the MILF, even with the use of discredited methods, before 2010.

 

But we must also put these criticisms into perspective. The MOA-AD is by itself a breakthrough document in that it recognizes the aspirations of the Bangsamoro and at the same time attempts to rectify past wrongs done to the Bangsamoro people.

 

Listening, however, to politicians such as Senators Mar Roxas, Chiz Escudero, and the rest of the United Opposition, you get the drift that the be all, end all of the document is Charter change and not the crafting of a lasting peace in Mindanao. Which is painting a skewed picture. Let us remember that these politicians all have designs for higher office in 2010 and it seems they are rabidly opposing charter change now because, let’s face it, charter change will put all their political plans into disarray.

 

So now, what? Fighting has again flared between the government and the MILF; local politicians are again fanning the flames of conflict; thousands and thousands of internal refugees are again streaming into areas as yet unaffected by war.

 

Meanwhile, our politicians can not rise above their selfish interests and look beyond their parochial concerns. Shame, shame.

Pitfalls of Communication

A couple of years back I read an interesting article in the Men’s Journal about the pitfalls of communication. I can not recall the author of the article but I remember the author illustrated his point by relating a particular incident in the many adventures of the Lone Ranger and his trusted sidekick, Tonto. My apologies to the original storyteller but begging his permission, I shall now attempt to recreate his Lone Ranger story. 

The Lone Ranger and Tonto, in one of their many forays to what was then the hostile plains of the Wild Wild West, were said to have been captured one day by hostile Indians. Surrounded and with nowhere to go, Tonto, in an attempt to wriggle out of a tight situation, immediatedly pointed to the Lone Ranger and said, “Kemosabi, Kemosabi.” 

Upon hearing this, the Indians burst out laughing. The Lone Ranger could not understand why the Indians were laughing, apparently at his expense, and why Tonto was too. 

Perplexed, the Lone Ranger asked the nearest Indian who happen to know a little English why they were falling all over themselves laughing. And the Indian said,”Kemosabi mean dim-witted, jackass fool.” 

And so the Lone Ranger, sans Tonto, was bound and brought to the village chief to await his fate. With the day almost done and after spending hours and hours under the pitiless sun, the Chief finally appeared and told the Lone Ranger,” We will grant you three wishes. On the third day, we burn you at the stake.” 

But the Lone Ranger, being, well, the Lone Ranger, showed nary a twitch in his countenance for he knew that Indians respected courage at the face of grave danger. And all who witnessed the Lone Ranger’s reaction were duly impressed. 

“What is your first wish,” asked the Chief. 

The Lone Ranger asked that his hands be unbound and he whistled. His loyal steed, Silver, came galloping from nowhere and, stopping only to listen to the whispered instructions of his master, immediately took off before the Indians could react. 

About on hour later, Silver appeared bearing a beautiful, desirable maiden on his back and the Indians, seeing this, were even more impressed. 

“The Lone Ranger very brave,” the Chief said, “He thinks nothing of certain death.”

And so they gave the Lone Ranger use of the grandest wigwam for the night, second only to the chief’s of course, and left him to his own devices. 

Next morning, the Chief came and asked the Lone Ranger his second wish. Again, the Lone Ranger whistled. Silver once again appeared just as before, and again took off after hearing his master’s orders. After several hours, the horse appeared with, just as before, an even more desirable woman on his back and the Indians were even more impressed. 

“Lone Ranger really brave,” the Chief said,”but tomorrow evening, after your last wish, we still burn you at the stake. 

Again the Lone Ranger was left to do his thing, in the second-only-to-the-Chief’s grand wigwam. 

At first light the next morning, the Chief again came to grant the Lone Ranger his last wish and again the Lone Ranger did as he has done for the past two days. He whistled and he gripped Silver’s long mane as the horse stood before him and said, ever so carefully lest the Indians hear, “I said POSSE.”

Charting A Just Peace

This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of government with regard to charter change—it’s motives will always be suspect. Ramos tried to amend the Constitution. So did Estrada. And, of course, there is no question that GMA wants it too.  

But all of these efforts to retool the Constitution have so far failed because of lingering concerns regarding the proponents’ vested interests. It is unfortunate that in the more than ten years of being the object of much public discourse, charter change has always been equated as a means for sitting politicians to perpetuate themselves in power. 

Negotiating with any revolutionary organization obviously requires being open to changing certain provisions of the Constitution. The mere fact that these organizations, the biggest groups of which are the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the National Democratic Front (NDF), are revolutionary in nature means that they believe they are not bound by the Constitution.  

Therefore, it must follow that in agreeing to talk with these groups, government must at least exhibit willingness to amend certain provisions of the Constitution for the talks to prosper. Otherwise, what is the point of talking? 

When government announced on the eve of the President’s state of the nation address that the impasse on the issue of ancestral domain in the peace talks with the MILF has been broken, it was generally considered a positive development, a step in the right direction. Yet here we are two weeks later, again suspicious, again thinking that something sinister, something other than a return to the peace table with the MILF, must be afoot.  

In handling the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain with the MILF, it did not help that the government chose to be secretive and instead chose to invoke yet again the much abused mantra of executive privilege. It did not help that the government, in admitting that there is indeed a need to amend the Constitution before any peace agreement with the MILF can be implemented, did not come out and qualify the nature and scope of the constitutional amendments. It did not help, too, that in attempting to forge a historic peace agreement with the MILF, the president chose to put in charge a discredited ex-general, one whose role in the “Hello Garci” controversy was never fully explained.  

But these issues are only peripheral concerns. The main issue remains the forging of a just and honorable peace for all the peoples of Mindanao.

As far as the MILF is concerned, the MOA-AD is already a done deal and it can not be faulted for thinking that it is so.

“They’re not at fault. If there is lack of transparency and forthrightness, it is the panel of the Philippine government,” Fr. Eliseo Mercado, a long-time Mindanao peace advocate, said in a radio interview Tuesday.

“They should have been more forthright with the Filipino people, especially in southern Philippines,” Fr. Mercado said.

Hopefully, this lack of transparency on the part of the government will be rectified when the Supreme Court hears the petition filed by the local governments of Zamboanga and North Cotabato on August 15. Secretary Jesus Dureza  was right when he said that the TRO will at least allow a “dispassionate, objective discussion on the merits of the issues that surround the said ancestral domain agreement.” 

In the meantime, it is to our best interest to focus on issues that forge peace instead of tuning in to all the noise that feed on decades-old fears and hatred. It is perhaps best to take notice of a plea by the Mindanao Peoples’ Caucus to “not allow politicians and vested interest groups to hostage the peace talks with their own economic and political interests.”   

And it is prudent to remember that, if there is any blackmailing going on, the MILF is not the only guilty party.