No terminal phase in peace work

Whenever I am requested to talk about my peace advocacy work in Mindanao, specifically in Bangsamoro, I get asked why I continue doing the same things every year.

The years have come and gone, along with some of my colleagues in peace advocacy work who have gone ahead to the Great Beyond.

But I am still here, after almost four decades doing this kind of work, despite my advanced age, creaky joints, graying hair and a much weaker body.

Once, I got this question: “Why are you doing peace advocacy when there is always war here?” I recall that I was on the verge of tears while answering: “If there is anyone who is entitled to quit this job, it is me. But I have decided to continue working for peace because it does not end with the signing of agreements and even with a president who claims to be partly Moro by blood…”

One friend on social media has sent me and my partner in life a thank-you message for the work that my colleagues and I have done, and that we are almost there—in the “last stretch” of our work for peace in the Bangsamoro.

Perhaps she meant that we are about to reap some “rewards” from our colleagues’ hard work in the coming plebiscite on the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL). If the BOL gets ratified in the plebiscite on Jan. 21, 2019, then we have reached the “last stretch.”

But an affirmative vote for the BOL is not the end of our peace advocacy work. In fact, it begins a new phase in our work for peace, which is not a destination, but a journey, an interminable one.

In other words, there is no such thing as a “last stretch” in the work for peace; it has no terminal phase.

As a journey, it is fraught with many hurdles, foremost of which is the lack of assurance that the Philippine state will handhold the fledgling Bangsamoro government until such time that it is strong enough to succeed. This entails an
unconditional commitment to support both the hardware and software needs of putting up a new and different kind of bureaucracy in a region that has gone through more than four decades of internecine conflicts.

Such unwavering commitment is based on an atmosphere of trust, similar to the trust parents extend to their children, when the latter start their journey toward adulthood. Trustful parents let their children falter, flounder or even fall along the way, because they know that they will be able to get back on their feet again and learn from their mistakes.

But throughout more than three decades of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), such trust
was missing. The national government did not trust the ARMM, and vice versa. For a long time, national policymakers often made snide remarks about it as a “dismal failure.” Several Bangsamoro leaders also retorted: The ARMM is only autonomous in name and not in practice, so how can it succeed?

A ratified BOL will not immediately bring in the peace dividends that everyone in this battle-scarred region desires and expects once the new Bangsamoro government will be in place.

For the envisioned Bangsamoro government’s leaders, who most likely will come from the hierarchy of the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front, it will be the start for them to make operational a different skills set—that of peace governance, something they admit they are neophytes at.

This is why a new phase in our work to forge durable, inclusive peace in the Bangsamoro has just begun.

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