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Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Malilong: Buying peace
By Frank Malilong Jr.
The Other Side
We have all heard the phrase, “to buy peace”. A husband does the laundry and the groceries in order to buy peace with the wife. Litigants are usually told by the judge to buy peace by giving up part or the whole of their claims.
Buying peace can be a humbling experience (I didn’t say humiliating) as in the case of the husband and, for most litigants, who usually invoke that the fight is “a matter of principle” (actually they mean pride), often hard to swallow. But in almost all cases, one gets the desired result: a peaceful co-existence.
Now comes Malacañang announcing that it will release P1 billion to the military in order to crush the communist insurgency. The amount is huge by any language. But can it really buy peace?
I can understand the growing impatience of the Arroyo government in dealing with a problem that had cost the country enormous losses in property and human lives during the last three decades. I can see that impatience inexorably turning into frustration.
The communist rebellion is one of the lasting, if notorious, legacies of the Marcos dictatorship, passed down from one government to another. (It therefore grieves me to see certain politicians not only taking potshots at the current administration’s efforts to address the problem but also giving unsolicited advice here and there, as if they hadn’t had their chance to make their ideas work before but failed so miserably as to have worsened the situation.)
It is undeniable, however, that this government has not done any better than its predecessors. The once promising peace talks have not only slowed down but grounded to a complete halt although, in fairness to the government, it cannot be accused of not trying.
The question is whether it has tried hard enough. Surely, there had been aggravations committed by both sides that had caused the peace negotiations to flounder. But the government is the stronger party and can therefore afford to give up much more than the other, not only in terms of resources and concessions but also in enduring and tolerating the other.
It seems that the administration has decided that enough is enough; the talking is over and the time has come for the enemy to bear the brunt of more powerful, or at least a better funded, military.
That, I would suppose, means abandoning the calibrated response that, although undeclared, the military has generally observed in favor of an intensified armed campaign. Whether this shift in strategy will work, we still have to see. An escalation of the armed conflict is, however, a certainty.
More dead bodies are going to pile up, casualties in a freshly-fueled war.
They say that sometimes, something has to get worse before it can get any better. I hope that this time, they’re right on the part about getting better.
(fmmalilong@yahoo.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 20, 2006 issue)
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