WHAT happened to Duterte's promises for Mindanao?
"I regret supporting you," writes Driza Abato Lininding, vice chair of the Bangsamoro Movement for Peace and Development, on his Facebook post over the course of Duterte's martial law and airstrikes in Marawi.
"What wrong had the Maranaos done to you? You target the drug lords and the corrupt, but they are not affected now, it's the poor here who are at a loss because they can't rebuild."
Lininding's words echo the sentiments of Maranaos, and perhaps many Moro people, who in 2016 expressed their support to the candidacy of Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte ran with promise of bringing peace and correcting historical injustice to Mindanao, as he filled his campaign speeches with lessons how past administrations failed to address the Moro problem.
The first Mindanao president promised change then. One year later, this Mindanao president declared martial law in Mindanao over a small motley armed group. Over 200,000 people from Marawi have been displaced by a month-long airstrike in Marawi. Maranaos like Lininding are pained on how to rebuild a city and its memory now shattered in shards.
Some 170 kilometers away from Marawi, in the communities of Talaingod and Kapalong, Manobo Lumads who returned home after Duterte's ceasefire declaration last year are facing the same threats that drove them out before.
This school opening, the Manobo schoolchildren from Talaingod and Kapalong who stayed in UCCP Haran for over a year have come face to face with the Alamara in their villages, the same paramilitary group that roam into their schools brandishing firearms and harassing teachers and students alike.
Last June 20 in the Salugpongan Learning Center in Nasilaban, Talaingod, an Alamara member fired his gun at a teacher whom he repeatedly threatened, and said, "We might as well see each other in hell!" The teacher, Ramel Miguel, evaded the shots fired at him, but the shots grazed a male student in his private part.
In Kapalong, Alamara leaders threatened students not to step out of their houses for school at Misfi Academy, saying that they will risk losing their parents.
For these Lumads, Duterte was their defender over the years. As mayor, Duterte mediated with the soldiers to pullout their troops and rein in the paramilitary, and defended the rights of the Lumad children.
But now, Duterte has called soldiers to "flatten the hills" in an all-out war against the Reds. But the communities are threatened as well.
"It is true that the Lumad evacuees have returned home, but the paramilitary organizations continue to grow fiercer and stronger," said Tigwahanon Manobo leader Datu Jimboy Mandagit from San Fernando, Bukidnon, who is being hunted by the paramilitary NIPAR.
“We call on President Duterte to fulfill his promise when he said that he would readily allow the Lumad to go home if he would be president.” said another leader, Datu Camilo Asulan from Kitaotao, Bukidnon.
It's been a year since these promises were made. Duterte is putting the country in a constant state of war, against drugs, terror and perhaps against the Reds. But the war might cost him the promise he intended: the peace for Mindanao.
(tyvelez@gmail.com)