PEACETALK ...

sibility that is beyond legal technicalities. This is a moral responsibility that is beyond the control of bureaucrats. Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the beginning was the book. In the end is a book. A book written to be read and not to merely dignify a coffee table or retire in the oblivion of a shelf. If I may humbly say so, it deserves a hearing.

Unless you are a Nabil Tan who has been engaged in the Peace Process for decades—or a Carol Arguillas who has covered Mindanao since the bloom of her youth, you are likely to stumble on something new in this book. You may even acquire a slightly deeper understanding of what has happened in Muslim Mindanao in the course of a long quest for peace, and possibly an insight beyond what President Fidel V. Ramos and the MNLF communicator Abraham Iribani offered in their respective books on the same subject.

As to insight, the penultimate chapter dwells on eight Lessons Learned from the Peace Talks. If the reader can only remember just one of these lessons, I hope it is Lesson Number Eight, with the heading: “It’s the People, Stupid!”

For it’s the people who make peace, not the leaders who sign peace treaties. To be precise, peace is the handiwork of the sum of individuals who decide to stop fighting and to live in the mainstream of a harmonious community. In the final analysis, peace is made at the level of the individual.

In recent times, much has been written about the politics of identity. Groups do matter. A group like the Bangsamoro matters, and matters eternally—only because the individuals who compose it have their own intrinsic worth. Without the intrinsic worth of individuals, the group that they form has no Collective worth. A zero multiplied by any number, no matter how large, will still be zero.

We must respect the Bangsamoro—only because every individual Moro, no matter how humble or how helpless, is worthy of respect as a citizen, as a human being.

We talk of economic opportunities for the Moro, of his participation in political decision-making, of delivery of social services, of good governance and protection of human rights—but what are these? These are signs of respect. Remove these signs of respect and you take away the respect. You assault the personal worth of the individual. The natural consequence of that assault is the probability of rebellion.

The bottom line is that rebellion first erupts in the heart of the individual… that peace is not possible unless it comes from the heart of the individual.

And the only antidote to the poison of rebellion, the only elixir for the dream of peace is respect and the attendant signs of respect.

That, I think, is all we need to learn. That is all we need to know.

Om[1] Shantih Shantih Shantih[2]. Wassalaamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh. [1] Pronounced AUM: the mystic sound in the Upanishad

[2] Peace that surpasseth understanding.