Giving peace a chance

On October 4, 2011, an article in “The Philippine Star” stated that 7 out of 10 Filipinos believed that a peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would be reached. This was according to a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) from September 4 to 7, 2011.

 The SWS poll also found that a little over half of Filipinos, or 52 percent of respondents, said that a peace accord is possible before President Noynoy Aquino’s term ends in 2016.

 The survey reported that public eagerness for a peace agreement is strongest in Mindanao, with 24 percent expecting a deal to happen in 2011 to 2013, compared to 12 percent in Metro Manila, 10 percent in balance Luzon and six percent in the Visayas. I was not a respondent of the survey but its results mirrored my own hope and eagerness for lasting peace in Mindanao.

 Like most people who watched footage of the caskets of the slain soldiers on TV, I felt very sad. There was no need to show footage of their grieving family and friends to show how painful it must have been to see their loved ones die in war.

 I was equally saddened to see footage of a woman who screamed as a group led by a Basilan local government official went to the scene of the Basilan ambush to recover the bodies of the dead soldiers. She was identified as the wife of a dead rebel.

 The issue of lasting peace in Mindanao has gone on for decades. The United States keeps a tally of the death toll in the wars it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder if anyone in the Philippines has bothered to make the same record for the war in Mindanao. The number of dead and injured soldiers and rebels must be in the thousands. The number of dead, injured, and displaced civilians must be in the hundreds of thousands.

 Movies have been made, books have been written, and conferences have been held to tell the stories of the long, drawn-out war in Mindanao and to figure out what the answers are to bring about lasting peace. The peace talks between the government and the MILF seemed like baby steps in that direction and allowed a lot of people to dream that peace had a chance.

 It is distressing that less than three weeks after the news article on the SWS survey came out, there are now calls for an “all-out war” in Mindanao. Its most vocal proponent is President Erap Estrada, whose own “all-out war” policy did not result in peace in Mindanao. The others are Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and Sen. Ping Lacson, both of whom are personalities from Marcos-era Martial Law, another time when “all-out war” was the policy in Mindanao. With the previous failures of the “all-out war” policy, I am surprised that these politicians continue to ask for its return.

 It would be a shame for our soldiers to have died in vain. Their deaths bring more reason to work harder for peace and to avoid the knee-jerk reaction to call for “all-out war.” The ceasefire agreement has mechanisms for violations of the agreement. And the rule of law should be applied in matters involving the pursuit of criminal elements. A war’s only victors are the arms suppliers.

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