President’s promise for Mindanao
What happened to President Duterte’s promises for Mindanao? “I regret supporting you,” writes Driza Abato Lininding, vice chair of the Bangsamoro Movement for Peace and Development, on Facebook over 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 supported the candidacy of Rodrigo Duterte, who ran with promise of bringing peace and correcting the historical injustice to Mindanao.
The first Mindanao president promised change then. One year later, he declared martial law in Mindanao over the acts of a small armed group. Over 200,000 people from Marawi have been displaced by a month-long airstrike. Maranaos like Lininding are pained on how to rebuild a city and its memory.
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 in their schools brandishing firearms and harassing teachers and students.
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!”
As mayor, Duterte mediated with the soldiers to pullout their troops and rein in the paramilitary units. He defended the rights of the Lumad children. He called on soldiers to “flatten the hills” in an all-out war against the Reds. But the communities are threatened as well.
“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.