Saturday, September 06, 2008 Barrita: No deal By Eddie O. Barrita Small Bites
PRESIENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo scrapped the government’s Mindanao peace panel, ending 11 years of peace talks with the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
She said she cannot be forced to sign a deal on an expanded Bangsamoro homeland at gunpoint.
Will tagging the MILF a terrorist group be far behind?
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Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro earlier said the MILF has become “irrelevant” after it refused to surrender rogue
commanders Ameril Ombra Kato and Abdullah Macapaar alias Bravo who led a bloody rampage in Mindanao.
That’s what you’ll get for talking peace with a group which cannot control all its forces.
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Teodoro said talks with armed groups, including the communist-led New People’s Army, would henceforth be based on
demobilization, disarmament and rehabilitation.
In other words, you can’t be in a negotiating table while rogue commanders sack villages and slaughter innocent civilians.
But be reminded always of the joke of a Moro rebel who said there won’t be peace in Mindanao until the Army surrenders.
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Government should work for peace in Mindanao to turn it from a “Land of Promise” to a “Land of Fulfillment” for all its
people, Christians, Muslims and lumads alike.
An “all-out war” will only produce black smoke thick enough to turn it to the mythical land of the Cimmerians, which Homer described in his Odyssey as a land of perpetual fog and darkness.
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Joavan Fernandez continues to hog the limelight, from surviving unhurt in a bolo attack to brandishing an automatic rifle and his other “little acts of terror” in Talisay City.
His father, Talisay City Mayor Socrates Fernandez, has sought police security escorts to protect his adopted son.
Yes, Joavan needs police escorts-–he should be escorted to the nearest jail or rehab center to protect Talisay residents.
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Some 123,000 power consumers in Metro Cebu will get a P500 subsidy each from the Visayan Electric Company (Veco).
That’s the “Katas ng Vat” that you’ve been waiting for.
