Malacañang has finally scrapped the controversial deal it had tried to strike with moro rebels in Mindanao. But at what human cost did the scrapping take? Even now, days after the scrapping was announced, the toll continues to rise.
Mindanao is simply not ready for the kind of geopolitical settlement that the moro rebels, with the stupid acquiescence of some Malacañang bright boys, have envisioned and want to impose on everyone in that land of confusing promises.
The demand of the moros for a separate homeland is untenable, even in a deceptive guise such as ancestral domain. That would be tantamount to dismembering the Republic, an act of treason by any legal or logical measure.
Do the moros have a right to their own destiny? Of course. That is a right available to everyone. In fact, if only the moros care to look beyond their noses, it is a right that is being practiced by everyone. Cebuanos have been doing it for years.
If the moros cannot chart their own destiny, they only have themselves to blame. No one probably has seen more development money plowed into a single direction with such regularity and consistency than the moros. Others would cry blood to get what the moros are getting.
The trouble is that it is the moro leaders themselves who make sure that sort of money flows into a single direction with such regularity and consistency --- into their own coffers. This leaves the rest of moroland justifiably indignant, at the wrong target.
Another problem in that godforsaken land is the insistence of the moros to put more emphasis on labels, such as ancestral homeland, when in truth and in fact an ancestral homeland already exists in de facto state, only without being called as such.
No non-moro can go to moro areas in Mindanao without getting the feeling that he is in another place outside the Philippines. But because the Philippines recognizes this inherent claim to a homeland, no attempt by whatever means was ever made to change things.
If only the moros can see things will a little objectivity and practicality, they will realize there is no need to rock the boat and count the cost because the things they demand are actually in existence, humming and operating. If they can't see it, then that is their fault.