Western Mindanao

The past three weeks have been spent in facilitating trainings in Zamboanga and Ipil. The first training was five days with a group of Asian Catholics, 27 in all, on the Mission of Peacemaking. The core message for that workshop is "You make peace with your enemies, not with your friends." And who is your enemy? One whose story you have not yet heard because you either do not have the opportunity to listen to this person or you don't want to create that space for the person to tell his or her story. As one of the participants said "This is very very difficult for me!" Sigh... nobody said peacemaking is easy or all nicey-nicey.
The second workshop was a week of working with grassroots leaders, some of them barangay officials, and the core message for this workshop is "When you advocate for peace, you have to involve all stakeholders and anchor your advocacy in policies supportive of peace." And when we say ALL, we mean ALL and that is why it is important do to a stakeholders' analysis as well as dialogue instead of debate on who is the better among us. It was very interesting to note that even the barangay captains did not know that there is a Government's Peace Program.

For the information of the reading public, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines has drafted a Peace Program way back in 1993 with FVR as the signing officer of an Executive Order 125.

The government then identified 5 major causes of conflict in the Philippines -
• massive poverty and economic inequity;
• poor governance (local justice not implemented, lack of response in terms of basic services);
• injustice and abuse of power;
• control by few of political power; and
• exploitation of cultural communities and lack of recognition of their ancestral domain.

In response, the Government’s Peace Process has the following principles:
• …should be community-based, reflecting the sentiments, values and principles important to all Filipinos. Thus, it shall be defined not by government alone, nor by the different contending groups only, but by Filipinos as one community.

• …aims to forge a new social compact for a just, equitable, humane, and pluralistic society. It seeks to establish a genuinely pluralistic political society….

• …seeks a principled and peaceful resolution of the internal armed conflicts, with neither blame nor surrender, but with dignity for all concerned

The government also came up with the 6 Paths to Peace as the Government's Peace Program

• Pursuit of social, economic, and political reforms (that address the roots of the armed conflicts)
• Consensus-building and empowerment for peace
• Peaceful, negotiated settlement with the different rebel groups
• Programs for reconciliation, reintegration into mainstream society, and rehabilitation
• Addressing concerns arising from the continuing armed hostilities
• Building and nurturing a climate conducive to peace

On February 28, 2001, GMA (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo - present President) signed EO 03 reaffirming EO 125 "Defining Policy and Administrative Structure for the Government’s Peace Efforts". GMA stated the peace program in her 10 Point Agenda (or was it 11?) under Agenda # 9.

In 2004, Congress approved the National Peace Plan, and this has been integrated into the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (Chapter 14).

And yet, Peace work is seen as either a military endeavor or "it's the work of the religious leaders" or "leave that to the NGOs". This brings me so much frustration - the peace program is actually very doable and the government has the infrastructure (down to the purok level) and the budget (delivery of basic services or "seeing governance down to the grassroots"). I just hope that the barangay leaders who participated in the workshop can really do something in their own barangays to further the work for peace.

The third workshop is with a group of inter-religious leaders (Muslims, Catholics and Protestants) in Ipil - it was fun with the Bishop participating as much as the others in the group. The core message is "The world is made for diversity, we learn to live together or perish." (In other words - All religions have peace as their core message. We can tap into that to build a more respectful environment.) My greatest learning in this workshop is how important the presence of the Bishop was ... he participated in the guarding of chairs (ha ha, I wish I had that picture!), in engaging in an out-of-this-world conversation piece (I wish I had the picture of the debriefing laughing so hard with the Bishop, tears flowing down our faces), and freely speaking his thoughts, his feelings, his realizations. I just felt that what the IRD group was doing in Ipil had the 1001% support of this man! And you can see that the members of the group (Muslims, Protestants, lay Catholics) felt they could approach him. I salute you, Bishop Joy!

And then... I too have my typhoon story. I was at EUNTES in Zamboanga City when Ondoy first hit the country. There was such strong wind and rain. At around 2 o'clock in the morning of September 26, I woke up to the noise of what was like the dragging of chairs outside my room so I got up and opened the door to peep out and saw the plastic chairs on the veranda being "pushed around" by the strong wind! When it was much lighter, I met up with the other inhabitants of EUNTES and shared my story. The participant from PNG said "I got up and saw our chair missing so I looked for it and saw it thrown into the trash bin!" (and the trash bin is outside and below the veranda!). Sigh... we are proud to be Pinoys who help other Pinoys. And please dear God, spare us from future typhoons, inshaallah!!!