In these awry days

IF WE put the expression of how Cagayan de Oro’s situation is from the name of a New York City-based political party that has become a viral meme over the internet, it would become “the amount of CdeO criminalities is too damn high.”

And too high indeed, as to why such cases just suddenly gaining a peak in time of elections and other peculiar phenomena the world is experiencing, it’s up for the conspiracy theorists to conceive.

The culprits are getting bolder, like they were remotely controlled and money is the only resolve to feed their hunger. Meanwhile, a silly excuse of being a “progressive” city is being pushed as to why it happens. Worse, police forces are only good in their uniforms when it comes to resolving the deaths of some victims brought about the culprits’ indiscriminate robberies.

While in the nearby towns of the city, armed rebels are moving as swift as a wind that disturbed the once tranquil villages in Bukidnon especially within the area of major fruit plantations like Camp Phillips in Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon, and reports also surfaced of suspected rebels attacking the towns of Lagonglong in Misamis Oriental also surfaced, including the “raid” in Surigao del Sur against an environmental activist.

All – just in time for the elections. As the rebels justified its attacks against the plantation firm, saying it’s a message against the company’s destruction of the environment, majority of the people were not happy, and it seems the rebels might have missed one important thing.

As to the destruction of the environment that later caused the heavy floods in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City brought by the storm Sendong, it was somehow true that it can be the forests’ degradation in Bukidnon, and even in Lanao del Sur.

I’m just wondering, if the rebels were for environmental protection, as much as they wanted to push for an ideal system of government, why did they leave destructive mining activities unscathed along Iponan River? Why it didn’t scare off big and destructive mining companies operating and continually raping the ecosystems in Caraga region as well?

(Nef Luczon is a freelance journalist and a part-time communications faculty and trainer. He is also a film and art enthusiast. Read his blog at Nefoi.blogspot.com and send comments to nefluczon@gmail.com)