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Peace Commission |
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Monday, 26 July 2010 09:16 |
 AMONG the current slew of suggestions and proposals from civil society to the new Aquino administration is for the creation of a Peace Commission or much better yet - from some quarters- a “Department of Peace”. The Mindanao Peaceweavers coalition in its letter last May to President Noynoy put forward the idea of such a commission “to carry out the peace negotiations on behalf of the government, among other tasks”. This implies that not a few are unsatisfied or unconvinced by the mandate and performance of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), which for the past decade at least has orchestrated the government’s overtures with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the National Democratic Front (NDF). As an ad hoc office of the executive department, OPAPP has been at the mercy of the changing policies and priorities of whoever sits as President and his or her security advisers, as has been the case. Consequently, for this and other reasons Mindanao’s peace process has been a loopy roller-coaster, if not merry-go-round, ride.
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Peace and Justice League |
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Friday, 09 July 2010 08:26 |
 LAST month of May, the broadly-based civil society group Mindanao Peaceweavers coalition (MPW) wrote a letter to President-elect Noynoy Aquino appealing to him to hasten the realization of just and lasting peace in Mindanao. The coalition offered the incoming President a framework called the Mindanao People’s Peace Agenda as roadmap to reach the envisioned “land of promise”. The Agenda’s three vehicles are the successful and speedy conclusion of the protracted negotiation between the national government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), equitable development that addresses the root causes of conflict particularly poverty, and bringing ethnic communities up into the social mainstream. The Agenda’s cross-cutting, interfacing principles that will energize these vehicles are good governance and right to self-determination of Mindanaoans.
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Herculean Task |
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Saturday, 05 June 2010 10:47 |
 PEOPLES ordinary and otherwise as well as organizations from all around have been prolifically writing or speaking out to President-elect Noynoy Aquino to plead to him keep his campaign promises, particularly on good governance and corruption-free government. Among them, the Mindanao Peaceweavers (MPW) in a letter to the next President added its broad-fronted, united voice to urge him to exercise “a strong political will to usher in a durable and not a fragile kind of peace in Mindanao (which) should be just – such that it should seek to address the root causes of conflict, rectify the historical injustices committed against disempowered and marginalized Mindanaoans”. MPW took a further step in engaging politically with the incoming government by offering its Mindanao People’s Peace Agenda (MPPA) as the framework for future policies and programs to achieve peace and development in the South.
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Wanted: Authentic Leaders |
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Friday, 07 May 2010 06:48 |
 IN THE current crescendoing election exercise, one central question is: Why is it very important for a democratic society in a republican system of government to elect political leaders, from president down to councilors? Of what use and importance are leaders to any organized community, be they of the political or other types?
In almost all cases, old and new societies, communities and organizations were or are able to realize or achieve their collective aspirations because first and foremost their leaders were or are benevolent, effective, and transformative. Good leaders are indispensable to the achievement of their people’s lofty needs and wants, especially their social peace and economic well-being. If the Philippine nation has been lacking in these essential blessings, it is precisely because her political leaders, mainly but not only, from the birth of the Republic down to the present dispensation, failed to live up to the barest standards of authentic leadership.
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Small Comfort |
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Monday, 05 April 2010 09:23 |
 SEVERAL thousands of young people in our region are graduating from college as the school year comes to end this March. Majority of them will be expecting to land a job afterwards but will be quickly, unpleasantly surprised when they soon realize that very few employment opportunities are available in this region. As they wake up to this painful nightmare, not a few will migrate to greener pastures, even to as harsh a place as Sabah. This is how our community has been losing for so many years now our best and brightest, which ultimately undermines local development and peace.
The usual suspect for this shortage of jobs is weak business and economy caused by the ongoing war in Mindanao. But after over 40 years of cycles of fighting and negotiating, it is beginning to be apparent that the suspect is not the real or actual culprit. Rather, the culprit is the lack of political will and real intention on the part of the national government to end the war once and for all. One only has to look at the present situation in Sulu and Basilan, which continues to boil in blood and steel despite the so-called comprehensive peace agreement in 1996. If that is a precedent of how peace settlements are implemented in this country, any future agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) may be equally futile. And how about the immortal New People’s Army (NPA), now the only active Communist rebel group in the whole of Asia?
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