Our own peace
There’s gloom and a little bit of uncertainty among Mindanaoans and a lot of frustration from President Rodrigo Duterte as the New People’s Army (NPA) terminated its unilateral ceasefire with the President Duterte following suit.
“[War], it will not end. Fine. But let it not be said that I did not try. So I guess that peace with the communists cannot be realized during our generation many years from now,” the President said in a speech delivered on Friday.
I have to give it to Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza for refusing to take on a warrior’s stance.
“Despite these, however, we are still hopeful that the search for peace will continue and the tragedy of Filipinos fighting fellow Filipinos will come to an early end,” Dureza said with regards the termination by the NPA of the unilateral ceasefire because of what is happening on the ground.
“As we always stress, the road to peace is not easy to traverse. What is important is that we all stay the course,” he added.
When it was the turn of the President to terminate the ceasefire for the government side, Dureza still refused to call for war.
“The President has spoken. He cancelled the government’s unilateral ceasefire. He gave his reasons. He makes the judgment call. And we all submit. And it’s too early yet to speculate its implications on the peace process. Let’s just watch how it rolls out,” he said.
Indeed, unilateral ceasefires can no longer sustain peace, there has to be a bilateral ceasefire, an agreement that both parties sign complete with guidelines on what has to be done to sustain the peace and what can be done if somebody breaks the protocol laid out.
As Dureza said, let’s just watch how it rolls out.
On our part, the best we can do is to continue communicating peace beyond just flashing a sign. The past half a century has proven that nothing can ever come out of this war.
The past half a century of “un-peace” has shown that the distrust planted through the generations cannot be erased simply by the scene of old men sitting across a negotiating table.
Peace has to be planted in place of the distrust and conflict nurtured through the years, and it has to be planted fast -- by the way we speak, by what we report, by what we read and listen to, by how we regard another.
Thus, we call on the eager-beavers out there, the urbanite-reporters imagining themselves to be war correspondents soon: No one ever wins in a war, especially when it’s a war against our own.
We have all the curses phrased against you, we’ve been muttering them as we watched and read the news. But we would rather hold our peace because we, who have known war, know how valuable peace is and we will not just give it up to feed another person’s ego like yours.--
Peace has to be planted in place of the distrust and conflict nurtured through the years, and it has to be planted fast