Friday, November 10, 2006 Editorial: Good news, bad news
THERE'S good news and bad news over Thursday's announcement by government that they would drop the charges against Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) officials linked with the recent bombings in Mindanao, though the question of whether the good outweighs the bad is still to be answered.
The good news is that the dropping of charges against MILF leader Al Hadj Murad Ebrahim may somehow provide a little more impetus to the return to peace talks between the government and the MILF rebels which had lately been derailed over the ancestral domains issue and the thorny issue on the bombings.
The bad news is that this bit of news would certainly anger those who view with suspicion the MILF leader's suspected role in the bombings based on their evidence that recent call messages on some cell phones indicated that Murad may have known or even directed the bombings.
These people would then assert that the National Government is bowing down to pressure from the MILF or even the international partners of the MILF who are partly financing the peace talks just to keep the whole process going. And it seems that the government is listening if only to show something positive out of the situation.
The big question remains as to whether the dropping of charges would in anyway prevent the incidence of these bombings at least in the immediate future.
Some naughty wags are quick to point out that the bombings may have been instigated precisely to warn the government not to cancel the peace talks.
Already there had been reports of troop offensives by the military against the MILF, which prompted the rebel group to lodge a protest to a joint international monitoring committee.
Then again there is still the detention of the wife and children of a suspected militant and the continued intelligence reports of MILF training terrorists in their camps.
At any rate the MILF leadership should reciprocate by reining in their more trigger-happy comrades and helping keep the peace by searching out and turning over these militants to government authorities. However, if skeptics' suspicions hold a grain of truth, it is extremely unlikely that this would come to pass.
