Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Wenceslao: Daanbantayan row and ‘all-out peace’ By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
DAANBANTAYAN is a fishing and agricultural town. My recollection of the place includes a political campaign for independent candidates in the 1978 elections. That was the first time I spoke on stage in an electoral rally. I don’t think our audience reached 20 people, but I was excited, I don’t know why. I was with then journalist Manny Lumanao.
I got back there years later, older and wiser. The contrast was observable.
When I stayed in the house of a family that owned a better fishing implement, I was able to eat many kinds of fish. In the poorer community we barely ate fish, especially when the weather was bad. Rice or corn was not the usual staple. Cassava cake was. Life was hard.
Daanbantayan is definitely bigger than my considered hometowns, Poro and Tudela. But it now shares the same problem with the latter. If by chance the court issues an order to execute its ruling that Augusto Corro and Jose de Leon won over the tandem of Sun Shimura and Ma. Luisa Loot in the 2008 election for mayor, expect trouble there.
Corro and the Loots fought an intense campaign in 2008. But that was not the complete picture. Corro is with the Martinezes while the Loots are with Rep. Benhur Salimbangon. Celestino Martinez III engaged Salimbangon in a hotly contested battle for the fourth district congressional post. That’s why the current tug-of-war is worrisome.
By the way, there seems to be another similarity between Daanbantayan and Tudela politics. Baquerfo is partly based in Lapu-Lapu City even if he has properties in Tudela while Corro is the brother of the wife of Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza. Incidentally, Corro’s p.r. man seems to be the same one handling Radaza’s publicity.
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President Arroyo describes the offensive against two Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) commanders in Mindanao not an “all-out war” but an “all-out peace,” whatever that means. The loser, so far, seems to be top MILF leaders. They could not counter the military offensive with an offensive of their own without losing credibility.
How can they stop government’s “punitive action” against Ameril Umbra Kato and Abdullah Macapaar a.k.a Commander Bravo, both of whom committed atrocities, without being labeled as coddlers of terrorists? They need a pretext to re-engage government forces in a war, but the pretext has not surfaced. Meanwhile, the battle rages.
Getting lucky is Nur Misuari and his Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), rival of the MILF. Had the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) been approved, the MNLF would have either been marginalized or returned to the warpath.
MNLF is the ascendant force in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that BJE would have replaced.
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P.S. to Beijing: Don’t tell me we cannot win any medal in some sports disciplines in the Olympics. Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco almost grabbed the gold medal in the 1996 Games in Atlanta in the light flyweight division in boxing. Any effort to rebuild our tattered Olympics bid should therefore give priority to boxing, or we won’t go anywhere.
But here’s the catch. Amateur boxing is in the hands of a clique, the reason why no real grassroots program in boxing is in place and why good boxers from say, Cebu and Mindanao, are rarely found in Team Philippines. So if we really want to win a medal in London in 2012, we should start with a thoroughgoing revamp in our boxing program.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
