Monday, September 15, 2008 Editorial: After Ramadan, what?
IT'S relatively quiet now in Central Mindanao, although evacuees still have to make do with very little resources being sent over, and very little means to fend on their own. But we all know that that is because of the holy month of Ramadan.
We can thus thank our Creator and the faithful for this holy month, because we are assured that for a period of time, albeit a very short period of time, there will be relative peace.
We know, however, that before the holy month petered down the enmity, there was a major issue that was left unresolved, and which is said to have triggered the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) offensives: ancestral domain.
Can the ancetral domain question be resolved? Prospects appear to be dim because before it fell quiet in the battlefront, the MILF leadership has said over and over again that they do not intend to renegotiate and that the botched memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain is already a done deal. The same MOA that the national government has scrapped, and as if to emphasize that move, government even scrapped the panel that drafted such MOA.
It is clear that whatever progress has been made regarding this very ticklish but very important issue has been crippled. Any attempt to raise the issue will be regarded with suspicion from all sides -- the GRP, MILF, the people and the leaders in the barangays and provinces that were to be affected by the scrapped MOA-AD, and the suspicion-filled Pinoys.
To make matters even more ticklish, there is not one group or individual in the horizon who seems capable of pulling off the job of settling the ancestral domain concern, which has the support of the Filipino people -- government branches, included.
These are but two issues that government and the people should worry about while there is a lull in the hostilities. These are two issues that have to be tackled in public fora, because these are two issues that lie in the root of all these conflict, and Ramadan is just 30 of 365 days. Three hundred thirty-five days of enmity can defile a whole generation, and that is just in one year.
