IT MAY be too early to judge whether the Magdalo mutiny, the way
it played out last July 27 around Oakwood hotel in Makati City, was
something positive or negative, in the balance, for the country. As
the cliché goes, history will judge. At the height of the mutiny and
its immediate aftermath, many described and continue to describe it
as a "wake-up call." It was like the famous question of former Vice
President Emmanuel Pelaez immediately after he was ambushed in 1982
and who passed away also last July 27: "General, what is happening
to our country?" Both, in different ways, were eloquent statements
of the state of the nation.
It is just unfortunate that it had to take a mutiny of young military
officers for that "wake-up call" to be heard. But it would be even
more unfortunate if we all instead "snooze" and go back to sleep or
"business (or government) as usual" after the initial rousing. That
is what our history shows, a tendency of recurrent "wake-up calls"
and "snoozes," to use hotel parlance.
As the Makati crisis was over, a visibly disappointed Magdalo group
leader Ltsg. Antonio Trillanes IV said, among other things, that "corruption
would go on..." In other words, that real change or reforms would
not happen, at least "in my lifetime." What is worrying is not so
much corruption or other national problems going on but the apparent
loss of hope in that statement. And it comes from one whose young
idealism, even though characterized as "misguided" by some, represents
a source of hope for the country.
Rizal, who inspired the Katipunan, whether Magdalo or Magdiwang,
once asked: "Where are the youths who will dedicate their innocence,
their idealism, their enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where
are they who will give generously of their blood to wash away so much
shame, crime and abomination?... Where are you, young men and women,
who are to embody in yourselves the life-force that has been drained
from our veins, the pure ideals that have grown stained in our minds,
the fiery enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts?"
We have to find new sources of hope, in terms not only of people
who can respond to the "wake-up call" but also of how they, we respond
and act. We have to get it right, and not only about the punishment
of the mutineers. It is good, to start with, that there are calls
and steps to investigate "the roots of the mutiny." This is not or
should not be just a matter of rooting out the civilian component
or political leadership alleged to be behind the mutiny. This should
go to the root causes of the mutiny, or why did these young officers
rebel. And speaking of root causes of rebellion, we can and should
go beyond the stated causes of the Magdalo mutiny.
For example, the Magdalo group laments the alleged selling of arms
and ammunition by defense and military officials to the MILF rebels
because these have ended up being used against AFP soldiers and have
therefore sustained and prolonged the Moro insurgency now going on
35 years (counting from the official founding date of the MNLF in
1968 occasioned by the Jabidah Massacre)—older even than Trillanes
himself! But they themselves do not seem to question the premise of
going to war, especially an "all-out war," against the MILF. In other
words, it is as if even an "all-out war" against the MILF is all right
as long as defense and military officials do not sell arms and ammunition
to the MILF rebels.
While Congress is at it, including an investigation into the Davao
bombings, why not investigate also the "all-out wars" of Estrada and
Arroyo against the MILF which keep setting back the peace talks with
them? These have never been investigated by Congress, the same way
it has investigated interim peace agreements with the MILF. That the
policy or impetus for "all-out war" has not changed with regime change
from Estrada to Arroyo shows that the problem is deeper than personalities
or leaders. The ouster, resignation, sacking or non-election of the
key top officials responsible may help but it may not be enough to
fully solve the problem.
The Magdalo mutiny lasted less than one day, while the Moro insurgency
and for that matter the communist insurgency (counting from the founding
of the CPP also in 1968) have lasted and are going on for 35 years
already. Which rebellions are more important or strategic, for nation-building,
to get to the roots of? Why have these rebellions been protracted
or recurrent?
Why haven't these been fully resolved or adequately addressed over
decades and several presidential administrations? In other words,
why do "the best and the brightest" of several generations, on both
or all sides, have to go to war with each other?
The President did say in her SONA that there are advances in negotiating
peace on two fronts, with the MILF and the NDF, and that next week
the GRP-MILF peace talks would resume this time towards a final peace
agreement. But haven't we heard this before like with the MNLF? Our
peace processes on the Moro and communist rebel fronts, counting from
1975 and 1986 respectively, have become protracted like the armed
conflict itself. Will we finally find and reach a just, lasting and
comprehensive solution to the Moro problem in a matter of a few months?
Or will it just be a negotiation of concessions necessary to achieve
the cessation of hostilities, cooptation of rebel leaders and demobilization
of rebel combatants? Or will it be resolved with the creation of independent
commissions to investigate the problem?
Too often, peace processes no longer continue and proceed to thresh
out the substantive agenda or issues of the peace talks once ceasefires,
demobilizations or disarmaments have been achieved. It is as if the
impetus or momentum gets lost, and inertia and comfort set in. Our
own recent examples of this are the cases of the RAM and of the RPM-P/RPA-ABB.
The case of the Magdalo group, much smaller and weaker than the RAM
at his height, could easily go this way.
It is interesting to note that, when the President gave her first
deadline to the Magdalo mutineers to stand down, she characterized
them as "bordering on the fringes of terrorism." The Magdalo group
was actually in danger, like the MILF was for a while, of being lumped
in the same league of extraordinary "terrorists" as the Abu Sayyaf
and the CPP-NPA. The Magdalo group of course responded by saying "We
are not terrorists, we are soldiers who want to speak the truth."
Too often, longtime rebel groups, even though long in existence decades
before 9/11, are tagged as "terrorist" and treated accordingly, thereby
aggravating rather than solving the rebellion.
And then we pride ourselves with the peaceful conflict resolution
of the Magdalo mutiny—we did it "without bloodshed." One wonders
though whether it would have been the same or ended the same way had
it been a group of MILF or NPA rebels which took over Oakwood and
there were no "mistahs" to talk with fellow "mistahs." It seems the
government or the AFP would still treat different rebel groups differently—depending
on whether these were military, Moro or communist rebels. In fact,
what is sad is that both the loyal military and the military rebels
would probably agree when it comes to the way to treat the Moro and
communist rebels. Can the young idealism that is there in the military,
and for that matter other sectors of society, also become a positive
force in support of a comprehensive peace process for the good of
the country and the people?(Kaiba
News and Features)
