EDITORIAL - Same dog, different collar?

Health workers and medical students are marching in the streets of Cotabato City. No, it has nothing to do with the first anniversary of people power II. The marchers are staging a five-day strike, treating only emergency cases in the city, to call for an end to kidnappings and demand the release of the latest victim, Dr. Rosemarie Agustin. The 53-year-old doctor, part owner of the Cotabato Medical Specialists Hospital, was entering her home when she was kidnapped Tuesday night. She was being taken on a boat to a marsh when the kidnappers ran into a military checkpoint. Two of the kidnappers were killed and another captured in the ensuing firefight, but the others escaped with Agustin.

The abduction was the handiwork of the Pentagon Gang, which is still holding Italian priest Giuseppi Pierantoni. Last year the group kidnapped four Chinese and their Filipino interpreter. Two of the Chinese were later killed, another escaped while the fourth was freed together with the Filipino upon the intercession of the mayor of Cotabato City and Libyan Ambassador Salem Adam.

Pentagon Gang members are said to be Moro Islamic Liberation Front renegades. But there are those who are saying that the Pentagon Gang is in fact the fund-raising arm of the MILF, used for shakedowns, terrorism and dirty tricks while the MILF talks peace with the government. The same suspicions were raised regarding the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro National Liberation Front, which forged a peace agreement with the government in 1996. Some local officials have pointed out that fleeing Pentagon Gang members take refuge in areas controlled by the MILF. Reports from Cotabato said members of the MILF and MNLF were preventing government troops from pursuing Agustin’s kidnappers.

We’ve seen what happened to the peace initiative with the MNLF. Until yesterday tension was running high in Sulu, where policemen drawn from the MNLF opened fire on government troops, killing Marines and Army Scout Rangers. Yesterday Malacañang announced that it had asked the United States to take the MILF out of a list of international terrorist groups, which includes the Abu Sayyaf and the Pentagon Gang. But before bending over backwards for the MILF, the government must first look into allegations that the MILF and Pentagon Gang are one and the same. The government must ascertain whether the MILF is sincere in discussing peace or merely making a mockery of the peace process.