Political Tidbits
Kaya Natin rejects recall move vs Panlilio
By Belinda Olivares-Cunanan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:09:00 08/26/2008
Filed Under: Politics, Local authorities, Mindanao peace process
A month ago a movement called Kaya Natin! A Movement for Genuine Change and Ethical Leadership was launched by four local officials: Governor Grace Padaca of Isabela province (this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award recipient for government service) and Governor Ed Panlilio of Pampanga, and Mayors Jesse Robredo (another Magsaysay Award winner) of Naga City and Sonia Lorenzo of San Isidro, Nueva Ecija, on the platform of ethical leadership, good governance, transparency, social accountability and electoral reforms.
Cecile Alvarez and I interviewed Lorenzo and the group’s ideologue, Harvey Keh of the Ateneo School of Government, on our dzRH radio program last Sunday, and they stressed their big hope of encouraging young people with integrity to run for elections and join government. In the past weeks, the four local officials have been touring various areas, talking to students and like-minded local officials who believe in good governance. Among their latest recruits is Governor Teddy Baguilat of Ifugao.
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But Kaya Natin may already have met a big challenge. On Monday the founding members threw their support for the embattled Panlilio, who faces a recall movement from his political opponents in Pampanga. The fight between Panlilio and his opponents, led by mayors like Jerry Pelayo of Candaba, has escalated, but the perception is that the quarrel is over quarry fee collections. Reports indicate that P246 million was collected by the year-old Panlilio administration for 2007-2008, whereas in 2006, when Mark Lapid was governor, the capitol only collected P29.1 million. From what I hear, some mayors are smarting from the fact that where before these fees would be divided up to include them, nowadays these go to the provincial coffers to fund projects and services for the people.
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What I like about the statement of Kaya Natin is that it does not play blind to the difficulties encountered by the priest turned politician, such as the unresolved issue of striking quarry workers, and calls for the resignation of his provincial administrator from civil society members, church and business groups and even some of his former supporters. But Kaya Natin stressed that these issues should be resolved, instead of resorting to recall, which will only polarize the various forces in Pampanga. Its founders threw their full support behind Panlilio, stressing that he is still the best person to govern the province in an effective and ethical manner.
Kaya Natin leaders urged Pampangueños to give Among Ed a chance to finish his term and continue the reforms he has begun, reasoning that reforms do not come easy. But they also prodded him to continue his dialogue with the disgruntled elements, and even offered to broker it. Panlilio should seize their offer with the humility of Christ.
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It’s a truism that the strength of a democracy lies in stimulating debates on contentious issues, but it’s also very much its weakness that as the debates widen, much of the opinion peddled as truth is bound to be off-track. We have only to look at what is being said about the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain now pending before the Supreme Court to realize this. Nowadays the only self-evident truth is that the peace process is going to be tortuous and tough.
I was reminded of this last Friday night as I chatted with Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita during the wake for former ambassador Alberto Pedrosa. When he was a military colonel, Ermita was the aide of Carmelo Barbero, President Ferdinand Marcos’ chief negotiator with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in the late 1970s, and two decades later he was the chief peace negotiator of the Ramos administration with the MNLF. So he has the advantage of seeing up close the peace process, which he described as fraught with difficulties and frustrations.
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Ermita recalled how Marcos outsmarted the MNLF by giving all kinds of concessions in the draft peace agreement but in the end dictated to Barbero on the phone to Libya one paragraph at the tail-end of the agreement. This stated that both parties agreed to observe constitutional processes.
Ermita also talked of the peace negotiations with the MNLF in the Ramos years that took 46 months of journeying back and forth to Jakarta, where the talks were being facilitated by Indonesia with full backing of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. He recalled that the MNLF wanted to include in the proposed Bangsamoro homeland Regions IX and X, plus Davao City and Palawan, to which the government objected.
On the sensitive issue of the assimilation of MNLF forces into the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Ermita recalled how Defense Secretary Renato de Villa asserted that he would never agree to get 20,000 of them into the AFP—until President Fidel Ramos ordered De Villa to take in 7,500 MNLF fighters. Ramos, who was also at the wake, confirmed this with a twinkle of his eye.
Today the peace process with the MNLF is holding up and its troops are successfully integrated.
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The lesson is to stretch our collective patience and give peace a chance, and provide constructive criticisms to move the peace process. Also at the wake, I urged former House speaker Jose de Venecia, who was President Ramos’ principal brain-trust for the 1996 peace agreement with the MNLF, to throw in his ideas to move the 2008 negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front—despite his oppositionist stance nowadays.
I note De Venecia’s proposal for a P50 billion Marshall Plan type of reconstruction aid for conflict areas in Mindanao. I also note that Ramos hasn’t weighed in on recent developments. Let’s all push for peace, as an all-out conflagration similar to what we saw during the Marcos and Joseph Estrada years would only result in more Filipino lives lost. It’s good to remember that at the height of the Mindanao conflict during the Marcos era, the AFP had 40 battalions in Sulu province but this didn’t end the conflict.
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