Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Speak out: Senseless political blunder By Jess kangleon faller
TO claim for any ancestral domain by any religious or ethnic group is a dead claim. It is no longer relevant in modern times. It has prescribed and lapsed with the passing of times. Besides, the claimant now is not the real party in interest, it’s the Filipino people. Hence, the government does not have the right to uphold and give due course to such a claim.
History tells us that long before we were discovered by Spain, this country had been inhabited and ruled by various races of people notably the Malays, Indonesians and the Chinese. This country was sometimes called “MA-I” Land of the Barbarians or “CHIN-AN,” Mountain of Gold.
Those were the times when we had Datu Lapu-lapu of Mactan, Datu Humabon of Sugbu, Datu Sikatuna of Bohol, Sultan Kudarat of Mindanao, Datu Sumakwel and Datu Kalantiaw of Panay, Rajah Sulaiman of Maynila and countless other datus and rajahs in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
Their names did not sound Muslim because these chieftains were not actually Muslims but local tribal natives worshipping their own gods and goddesses with their own dialects.
Not long after, these people were baptized as Pilipinos or Pilipinas after King Philip II of Spain when the Spaniards came to our shores almost the same period foreign Muslim missionaries came to propagate the Islam religion in certain areas in Mindanao, notably Sulu and Tawi-tawi. The infiltration of those Muslim missionaries in those areas is not a fair justification to claim that Mindanao is a Muslim land.
Besides, any claim for ancestral domain seems a hindrance to progress. It contravenes the momentum of economic growth and the migrations of people. It cannot be denied that most of our forefathers possessed and owned vast tract of lands throughout the country as ancestral lands, but they lost those possessions gradually by a stroke of progress. With this situation, could you set back the hands of times and re-claim those lost ancestral lands of our ancestors without creating chaos, confusion or even war?
That is what is happening now in Mindanao. Giving importance to their claim for ancestral domain, our government without thinking the future ramifications and consequences of their acts, offered them first the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. Now they are asking for state and a separate government. This was a senseless political blunder committed by our government. We are only a group of poor and small islands. Certainly, we don’t have the luxury to splinter it back into various tribes of the country.
To push through with it in whatever form would now mean endless protracted war, maiming of innocent civilians and retarding progress.
