Not very bright

Gregorio Honasan has a bright idea. Why not bring in all the living presidents to talk peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

“With their combined individual experiences, their inputs become very important since they were once in a position to decide on the matter…. It is a non-issue whether (the former presidents’ opinions) are favored by the administration. No law requires Malacañang to follow whatever they suggest but we must put politics aside for now to address our serious problems.”

Now you know why they never succeeded in toppling down Cory. They might have had the arms but they did not have the brains. Well, Cory was popular too, and had the support of the people. But that’s another story.

What’s wrong with Honasan’s proposal?

Well, first off, P-Noy draws in all the living previous presidents to a council to talk peace with the MILF, he won’t need the MILF to torment him, he will have all the torment he needs from the crew he has gathered. Or P-Noy draws in all the living presidents to talk peace with the MILF, the last people he will need to talk peace with are the MILF. Or still P-Noy draws in all the living presidents to talk peace with the MILF, he will not stop the war in Mindanao, he will create a new war for the rest of the country.

You gather all the presidents, past and present, in one room and if they do not end up stabbing each other in the back, which may not altogether be figurative, they will end up quarreling about whose strategy is best. Or indeed boasting about how they nearly managed to solve the problem in the South in their time if only the others present in the room had not been such obstacles to them. It’s the stuff of which plentiful jokes are made.

Of the former living past presidents in fact, only Ramos has something to add to the table. That is one of the sublime ironies of this magic realist nation. The one president who managed to turn swords into plowshares, or to get the combatants to lay down their arms, was not a man of peace but a man of war. Or so his profession made him so: Ramos was a soldier. It was Ramos who managed to forge a truce with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the New People’s Army (NPA), one that lasted for quite a while.

Ramos would do another equally remarkable thing while at this, which was not to militarize the government by appointing ex-generals to it but to civilianize the generals. Though that often only meant turning them into corrupt politicians. Proving his critics wrong, myself included: I thought he was taking a perilous course. In the end, he did not weaken civilian rule, he strengthened it. The military developed a healthy respect for it.

But why would you need a council of peace, or war, for his “input”? Ramos can always send unsolicited advice to the president any time, including text messages which P-Noy has been known to read and respond to. Though Ramos isn’t the type to do that, he’d much rather go straight to the media, having never really gotten used to not being president anymore. But which also shows how naïve, if not utterly silly, Honasan’s call for the presidents, “ex” and current, to set politics aside to attend to serious business is. Never mind the politics, just mind the personalities.

Second off, and far more seriously, you gather the presidents, ex and current, to talk with the MILF, the MILF will have representation but the people will not.

Who are the members of the cast Honasan means to assemble?

Erap is a convicted plunderer. While his conviction arguably came under the auspices of someone who had no moral right to push for it—never mind that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was far more corrupt, mind only that she was illegitimate—it was not without basis. Erap’s impeachment trial was an eye-opener in more ways than one, a morality play that played out before the gallery—it appealed to coño and masa alike—that turned him from hero to heel in exactly the same way the movies turned him from heel to hero. Why should we take comfort in the thought that he can be conscripted to safeguard our homes and our hearths from the Huns?

Arroyo is a bona fide usurper, one who obtained her mandate by the grace of Garci and not of God. Next to Marcos, who also became illegitimate after martial law, she was the most detested leader of this country, a fact the people made known in the last elections, turning her into a kiss of death for her chosen ones. Quite apart from that, what can you expect from someone who was perfectly willing to cede Muslim Mindanao to the Americans, headed by her avowed fan, Kristie Kenney, for a crack at American support after 2010?

Again that only leaves Ramos as reasonably blameless. But not if Miriam Defensor-Santiago is to be believed. To this day she is convinced Ramos got the presidency—at her expense—by the grace of (Ronnie) Puno and not of the Poon.

It’s enough to make you think Gringo is secretly working for the MILF. In fact, before you can talk with the MILF you need to represent the people, you need to unite the people, you need to have the people behind you. Honasan’s proposal shares the same fallacy as Bongbong Marcos’s call for P-Noy to unite the country by agreeing to bury his father in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. A president does not unite his country by uniting with those who oppressed it, he does so by uniting with those that were oppressed by them. A president does not represent his country by soliciting the advice of those who messed up the country, he represents it by listening to the voices of the aggrieved. A president does not bring a just peace to the nation in whole or in part by resurrecting the very people who made its citizens’ lives a living hell, he does so by driving a stake through their hearts.

Collect the blackguards to talk peace?

That’s just not very bright.