Look beyond your noses, people
At a pleasant dinner among old friends, someone tried to lure me into a discussion of Mamasapano and the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law and issues surrounding them. I refused. There is a time and place for everything, and after long weeks of heated give-and-take about the BBL on Facebook and elsewhere, I was not about to spoil an evening of friendship and goodwill with more of the same.
My beef is about people who are addressed as honorable but they’re not; those we normally bow to as their eminences, a title they don’t deserve; and those who make biased pronouncements from their perches in the media with little or no knowledge of the issues. I refer to legislators, bishops, political has-beens and media pundits who, faced with the opportunity to pull the country away from the edge of disaster, are unable to see beyond the ends of their noses, and fall way short.
After Mamasapano, all we hear from them is war and a growing number of R’s — revenge, retribution, rebellion, resignation, removal. And the list continues to grow.
Actually, they choose to be myopic, for reasons of their own. The most obvious is the 2016 election just 14 months away. To put it bluntly, the tragedy in Mamasapano has given low-scoring presidential wannabes a golden opportunity to try and raise their status with the public as genuine presidentiables. And what better way to win the hearts and minds of a grieving nation than to demonize the MILF as murderous terrorists and the women at the helm of government’s peace process as amateurs who are lawyering for the enemy?
They have taken a rash, aggressive, stance, grabbing a now-or-never, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for national projection. Never mind the violent fall-out on the peace process. Never mind the many victims of a protracted war. Never mind the political instability that the country, which has just taken off economically, could least afford at this time.
Then there are those who are taking advantage of Mamasapano to get back at the person who has deprived them of the good life they enjoyed under past regimes — they who miss the old days of plenty before the President launched his campaign against corruption that has landed some of their leaders in detention. This group includes a handful of bishops who apparently, unrepentantly, miss the perks of the past, and are still smarting over the passage of the reproductive health law, in spite of the un-Christian tricks they played to overturn it. And there is the knee-jerk Left that is known to take advantage of any issue to denigrate the ruling government, hoping that it will bring the Party closer to establishing a communist state in the country.
What we have here is a combination of blind ambition, self-imposed myopia, age-old biases, determined prejudices and strong misconceptions of people hell-bent on throwing the baby out with the bath-water.
They insist that President Aquino should explain his role in the Mamasapano tragedy, and resign. But after the President has explained what he knows — not once but three times — and it is not what they want to hear, they maintain he is lying, passing the buck, covering up. They also hold fast to the belief that the passage of the BBL and the government’s aggressive pursuit of peace in Muslim Mindanao is all about satisfying President Aquino’s need for a legacy, his supposed lusting after the Nobel Peace Prize, and his allegedly humungous ego.
Look beyond your noses, people. For once, look up from your gadgets and take a hard look at Muslim Mindanao then think about what is at stake there. Think about the communities that must evacuate every time the conflict reaches their doorsteps. Carrying what they can, with children, elderly and animals in tow, they must look for safe havens while the government troops and the militants try to decimate one another. Think about the children who lose their parents and siblings to the war of attrition that is going on in their backyards. Think of our soldiers who obey the call to fight for country with no guarantee that they’ll be back in the bosom of their families. Think of the millions of people in urgent need of roads, bridges, permanent homes, livelihoods, food, health, education — goods and services that can only be delivered when there is no war in their sitios, towns and cities.
As you sit in traffic cursing the MMDA, or at your desks uploading insults on Facebook, think about the vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance and violence the children, women and men of Muslim Mindanao have lived with all their lives. The Bangsamoro Basic Law that the President is pushing for is about finding workable solutions to their situation and bringing about a virtuous cycle of development, social services and peace.
Is that too much for our Muslim brethren to ask for? Is it too much for us to give them?
We have learned through experience of many decades that war is not resolved through war. Belligerent speeches of legislators and commentators exacerbate a bad situation. And calling for the summary dismissal of an elected President every time we disagree with him is infantile.
If we really want peace— and I haven’t heard anyone say he doesn’t — let us build it in the ways of peace.
Listen to the peacemakers and reject violence as the way to peace. Hear them speak and acquire their language of inclusion. Amid the rabble of nay-sayers, keep the faith and do not lose sight of the prize — of shared prosperity, mutual understanding, and genuine progress and peace in the land, for us and our brethren in Bangsamoro.
