EDITORIAL - Evict squatters, give land to bandits

Most people frown on squatting. Squatters may claim all rights due them as human beings. But most people do not think these include the right to take over properties that do not belong to them and claim these as their own. 

Nevertheless, consider how the government deals with the squatter problem. When officials of government still have a need for the votes of squatters, they let them be for as long as they possibly can.

But when the time comes when protecting the interests of property owners becomes more beneficial for government officials, moves are quickly made to clear out the squatters from every square inch of land to which they tenaciously pitch their precarious lives.

Now consider how this same government deals with the MILF and other Moro bandits who exact a heavy toll on the peace and progress of Mindanao. Instead of going after them the way it would in evicting squatters, this government gives them “areas of temporary stay.”

Areas of temporary stay, or ATS, are pieces of sovereign territory of the state that the government has cavalierly given away to Moro lawless elements who use their lawlessness to parlay concessions from a spineless government.

The Moros want to break away from the republic to create their own Islamic state. To do that, they have used every means necessary — outright hostilities, going through the motions of peaceful negotiations, commission of common crimes and terrorism.

That is why the call from an increasing number of people for government to rethink its strategies in Mindanao is beginning to make real sense. More importantly, it must finally come to grips with the fact that the MILF, Abu Sayyaff, and all other armed groups are one and the same.

Yet, it is to these groups that government decided to give part of the patrimony of the state as their own, in the naive expectation of buying peace. Government is simply being played by these groups in the palms of their hands.

There is nothing temporary about an ATS, as government seems to naively expect. If the government cannot even enter these areas, how can it expect to actually recover them. The Moros were prepared to fight for every inch of land but government gave it to them on a silver platter.