The MILF as an NGO? Might as well let bin Laden run for senator

This writer is hardly gone three weeks than he comes home to find Mindanao betrayed.

Susmariosep! Nobody seems to be able to clearly explain the weird "interim" agreements signed on May 6 and 7 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with the leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front by that strange character, Norberto Gonzales, who’s styled the Presidential Adviser on Special Concerns. But it bears the stigma and stink of surrender.

As I’ve indicated in a previous column more than a month ago, this guy Gonzales has become more and more a Special Concern (worry) himself for all of us, since he operates in a behind-the-scenes manner yet boasts the full support of President Macapagal-Arroyo.

I won’t flatter him by calling him a Machiavelli (Old Mac would turn around in his grave), but he ought to be renamed Bert bin Backpedal since, from the first time he emerged on the national scene more than a decade ago, he has become noted for backing up and bestowing lavish concessions whenever he deals with Moro rebels and suspected "terrorists".

For instance, wasn’t he the fellow who flew down to Jakarta to apologize because the GMA government had had the temerity to arrest and detain three Indonesians caught at the airport carrying "detonating triggers" and other suspicious paraphernalia?

In any event, that other appeasement Datu, Secretary Eduardo Ermita (whose record of surrender begins with the Marcos regime when he accompanied the late Defense Deputy Minister Carmelo "Miling" Barbero to Libya, to participate in the signing of the demented Tripoli Agreement with Libya’s Strongman Col. Moammar Ghaddafy) is defending the deal by insisting that it’s "just a matter of interpretation".

When Ermita, who acts like a reincarnation of England’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who caved in to Adolf Hitler in the Munich Pact ("peace in our time"), protests that an agreement with Moro insurgents is not a sell-out – we immediately conclude that, indeed, it is a sell-out.

What? Will the government now pay "reparations" and allot large amounts of money to rehabilitate the areas where the MILF rebels clashed with our Armed Forces troops in those bloody battles of the year 2000, which saw our soldiers finally overrunning the 45 heavily-armed camps and redoubts of the Muslim rebels at great cost in terms of blood, effort, and logistics?

Why on earth should we act as though a crime – or worse, an atrocity – had been committed against the rebels and their encampments? They attacked peaceful cities and towns, raided and destroyed communities, burned chapels and killed thousands, including men, women, children, not just soldiers. What they got was the mailed fist of justice. Now, in form of apology, we’re going to compel our taxpayers to pay for the damage? Sanamagan. We might as well invite Osama bin Laden to come in and run for the Senate – since we’re giving away the store, anyway.

Our soldiers – their disgust being voiced by the new AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Roy Cimatu, who testified that he lost 85 of his men and suffered 250 wounded during the three-month campaign to overwhelm those MILF camps, a bone-grinding running battle climaxed by the capture of their main HQ, Camp Abubakar – are up in arms over the giveaway deal.

It makes a mockery of the death of their comrades, the maiming and permanent crippling of many of the wounded, and their own sacrifices. The next time we ask our boys to fight, they may not be too eager to risk their necks to gain what will be given back anyway.

Perhaps President GMA isn’t running for reelection, after all. She may have lost most of the Christian votes in Mindanao, in much of the Visayas, and possibly elsewhere as well. Gonzales for his part should move to the frontier in Mindanao, where life is constantly on the edge of danger from rebel attack, kidnapping or murder to better appreciate the situation. But it’s too late.

And here’s the most laughable development. Presidential Assistant for Mindanao Affairs Jesus Dureza – who chairs the government panel conducting peace talks with the MILF (yet wasn’t consulted, I hear) – has now come out with the announcement that the MILF must first register as a non-governmental organization (NGO) and place itself under the rules and regulations of the Commission on Audit before it can acquire access to any funding support from local or foreign sources.

Dureza, another inveterate peacenik, said this was among the requirements imposed under the so-called government-MILF rehabilitation and development agreement inked in KL last May 6.

I can just imagine MILF Chieftain Ustadz Hashim Salamat rushing to fill out a form and asking his spokesman, Eid Kabalu (who’s a lawyer), whether he’s authorized to witness the document as a Notary Public.

We may call ourselves a Republic, but, too often, we’re more like a Laugh-In. (And it hurts when we laugh).

* * *

Gee whiz. Without further ado, I believe that the President should scrap the embarrassing Terminal 3 "PIATCO" contract and have done with it.

The biggest funder of the stalled Terminal 3 construction boondoggle, the German giant, Fraport AG, has sunk $300 million into that faltering airport project and its angry shareholders (including the German federal government, which may be confronted with this scandal as an election issue this year) refuse to pay a single euro more.

PIATCO, indeed, is practically dead in the water. Where will that corporation get the estimated $100 to $150 million more needed to complete the Terminal 3 airport set-up, which has become an over-priced white elephant?

By this time, the Cabinet member assigned to investigate the project, Presidential Adviser on Strategic Projects Gloria L. Tan Climaco, has already submitted to the Chief Executive her adverse report. There’s only one solution for the government unless it wants that shell of a Terminal to remain in full view of all arriving and departing aircraft as a monument to government indiscretion, indecision – and folly. Why can’t the GMA administration "get" the Chengs out of the project? Are they too powerful – or influential? Have they too many "friends" and "collaborators" in high places? Does the spoor go all the way up to – my, oh, my?

One thing is certain. The President and her crew can’t sit on their hands in this matter. They must save the Terminal 3 undertaking – too much has already been poured into it. Worse, it is already creating a mounting climate of friction between Berlin and Manila (not just Frankfurt) since, plagued with so many troubles such as a sinking economy, still massive unemployment, labor unrest, despite that IG Metall deal, and domestic political squabbles, the Germans don’t appreciate still another expensive scandal laid at their doorstep.

I submit that the government should take over the entire shebang. Sure, the government is famous for committing blunders and wallowing in cost-overruns itself, but it’s the only game left in town.

* * *

Since I arrived from Rome only a couple of days ago, please forgive me if I haven’t completely gotten up to speed on the controversy over those exorbitant purchased power adjustment (PPA) fees. Of course, we don’t want to pay those awfully-high electricity bills. Of course, in its "emergency" bid – for which it got "emergency powers" – to cope with those ruinous and morale-depressing 12-hour daily brownouts which were the curtain call of the Cory regime in 1992, the Ramos administration may have "bought" too many power stations at too high a price. Probably there were fantastic kickbacks and some people made a killing – at the expense of consumers. Too many of those power-generating units are lying idle because we can’t afford to activate and utilize them. That’s a tragedy.

But how will a Senate investigation remedy matters? There’s already too much "politics" poisoning the air. Give us a break.

I think that the only sane way is for us to stop throwing stones and imprecations at each other, and put our heads and hearts together to find ways and means of reducing the cost, including the amount of the threatened "universal charge". In our vehemence over "punishing" people (in the end, nobody really gets punished), we frequently end up punishing only ourselves.

And, by the way, I don’t see how foreign borrowing will help alleviate our pain in this affair. Our people will, in the long run, be paying even more – since they’ll be paying "interest" on top of everything else. If this sounds too simplistic, again I beg your pardon. I’m a self-confessed simpleton. This trait is what enables me to confuse the geniuses, of which there are a great many in our midst.

I’m not sorry I missed last Tuesday’s Luzon-wide blackout. I was in the Italian medieval city of Viterbo where the electrical circuits, at least, were modern and in working order. Was what happened here really a "computer glitz"? It used to be "blame the media." Nowadays, it seems, it’s "blame the computer."