Ombion...

deadly campaigns. And Duterte’s assurance of presidential protection when they kill on duty is like a bullet-proof vest given them to go on rampage.

What I worry more are the rabid anticommunist groups and the fanatical supporters of President Duterte who by the same exhortation may have organized themselves into death squads, get arms from the landowners, and trainings from the military and police, and carry out mass killings of their own.

Negros was notorious for this in the late 70s and 80s, and what we are seeing now, could be part of the bigger and rehashed scenario developed and mastered by the psywar and combat specialists of the military and police.

Who benefit from these killings? Certainly not the ordinary folk, but those who want to maintain and perpetuate the old feudal order, that still largely characterized the

Negros society.

I feel so sad and angry that the solutions of the government is still the failed strategies employed by the Marcos fascist regime and the post Marcos administrations, e.g. brutal anti-insurgency campaigns, massive troops build up, border control, food blockades, hamletting, mobilization of armed fanatical groups in the mountains, control of citizens movement, massive recruitment to anti-communist organizations, and now, localized martial law, or martial law in regions and provinces where armed insurgents are bigger and stronger.

Where is the local government in this?

I keep on repeating in my past write ups, lectures and seminars, that good governance is one of the keys to defeating armed insurgency, not military actions, not psywar operations, not transforming everyone to become support units of the military and police.

Bad governance always breed poverty, community neglect, corruption of services, discontentment, sporadic dissent, and finally enrollment to the armed insurgency.

The communist insurgency thrives not only by the strength of its own ideology, but also by those conditions fueled by bad governance, e.g. corrupt politicians, government acting as extension of private property of the landed class or a political dynasty, non-functioning mechanisms of participatory governance, inadequate or absence of social services, biased against the poor, patronage politics, among others.

Martial law is not the answer, nor militarization. Both will only disrupt and destroy economy, fuel dissent and armed insurgency, bring more widows, crippled children, parent-less families.

But when good governance flourishes, political dissent and armed insurgency diminishes.

Hope somebody up there and down here should listen, be sober, and see the bigger picture and impact more than their pockets.*