Yet another ploy

EDITORIAL

Click to enlarge

12/03/2008

In a bid to get back the international monitors --- who had packed up and left the country --- and get a ceasefire agreement going, Malacañang announced the other day that a new peace negotiator, in the person of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, has been named, with the completion of the panel to follow this week.

Hopefully, says Malacañang, peace talks leading to a peace pact with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) before the year ends will resume.

Gloria Arroyo and her aides certainly know this to be an impossibility, given the fact that the MILF certainly won’t settle for less than that which the rebel group had almost had on the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) that was canned by the Supreme Court (SC).

From all indications, what Malacañang really wants is a long-term ceasefire with the Muslim rebels, since the Palace knows the impossibility of giving the MILF what it wants by way of a virtual independent Islamic state within the Republic and that no peace pact with the MILF is forthcoming — certainly not within this year or next, when her term ends.

Still, Malacañang, with its new set of peace panelists, can always try to convince the Moro rebels to sit tight and wait for a new Constitution it will promise to put in place before 2010, even when a change in the Charter, if it does come in 2009, will hardly provide the MILF that ancestral domain and build an independent Islamic state which will naturally cause the dismemberment of the republic. That won’t pass. The most that can be granted would be a federal state for the MILF, but still under autonomous — not independent — terms.

Truth is, it would be better for the MILF to forge a peace pact with the next government, because it is almost certain that Charter change (Cha-cha), if Malacañang and its allies in Congress continue to push it, may just be the end of Gloria and her regime, as a great political turbulence is expected to reign in the country if such Charter changes pushes through.

It is almost impossible for Gloria and her aides to expect the Filipinos to believe them when they say she is leaving the presidency when her term ends, mainly because she has neither a word of honor nor has she stopped her plotting ways to perpetuate herself.

When her peace panel, then led by Ret. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, along with her chief peace adviser Ret. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., approved the MoA-AD with the MILF, it was certainly not with the intent of finally achieving peace in Mindanao, but to force through a constitutional change that would see her in Malacañang even after June 30, 2010. The SC saw through this evil design of hers, which is could be the reason it ruled against the MoA-AD.

Peace talks are being pushed by Gloria and her peace advisers mainly because this would again be yet another justification for Gloria to stay on after 2010, under a new type of government. Truth is, all of her paid aides and allies have been in power and position for some eight years and if she goes, they go. But where, since the lot of them are unelectable, along with the fact that so many of them are so mediocre and unfit that they would have a difficult time getting a job in the private sector.

True, a lot of them have amassed a great amount of wealth in the past eight years, but for these types of officials, retaining power and pelf plus more money is most important to their accustomed lifestye.

Besides, a lot of them will probably be facing charges once a new administration takes over, which is why there is that great push for Cha-cha.

But now, they again talk of a peace pact to be forged with the MILF.

Yet even the Mindanaoans know that giving the MILF its so-called ancestral homeland, which forms part of the best of the Christian land by way of natural resources, wasn’t going to bring peace to that region. No Christian wants to be under Muslim law in his own land.

As things turned out, there was no peace at all, but more war in that region. And even if those so-called dialogs with the stakeholders won’t bring about another MoA-AD unless of course the MILF settles for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, as currently composed, to serve as its homeland. But even this would not bring peace since the current officials in the ARMM aren’t likely to hand over power to the Moro rebels, who hardly represent the Moro people in Mindanao.

Gloria’s options to stay in power after June 30, 2010, have become much too limited. Trust her not to give up power just like that.

But trust the Filipino people too, to kick her out of Malacañang, if she insists on not giving up power and position.

Back to top

For comments about this website:Webmaster@tribune.net.ph
The Daily Tribune © 2006