Lacson and Tan

Upon hearing the announcement of the plan to appoint Sen. Panfilo Lacson as secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government after he ends his second term next year, readers from Sulu, particularly the town of Jolo, Zamboanga City, and at least three from Basilan, e-mailed and texted me to add this column’s voice to their “clamor,” which I am now doing—with much hope and relief.

This has nothing to do with the competence of incumbent Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo. It has everything to do with the survival of the southern islands where nothing will happen unless the peace and order condition will return to normal. No government program or project will do any good, or even hope to succeed, unless there is peace, and the constituents there can live normal lives again, that is, in a manner that Filipinos elsewhere in this archipelago of over 7,000 islands take for granted.

To give you an idea of how it is to live in the town of Jolo: By six o’clock, the downtown area is almost deserted. Shops and stores, even eateries, are wary about staying open beyond that time.  This may seem a mere aberration to many readers, but if you have lived in Jolo before 1974, this alone can make you cry. The residents believe there is an almost total breakdown of law and order in Sulu nowadays.

Because of the uncertainty in the peace and order situation, people simply live from day to day, immobilized by an insidious kind of demoralization that has entrenched itself so completely that daily life has become a charade, and they just go through the motions of it out of necessity. Government employees just want to survive until they reach retirement. Those in the private sector just want to get a child through college so he or she can hopefully go abroad and help the family flee and start a new life elsewhere. The rest stay because they have nowhere else to go.

Business establishments ignore paying taxes (as far as I know only hardware stores issue receipts for purchases; the rest, including drugstores, hand you a pink “delivery receipt,” most often without even a signature). But why should they pay taxes to a government that can’t even eliminate a scourge of their lives, the so-called Abu Sayyaf that, at any time it pleases its criminal members, extorts much of their earnings, bombs their establishments or, worse, abducts their owners and executives in broad daylight right at the heart of town, hauls them off to the jungles, and then wipes out all their savings through ransom demands—that is, if they or their loved ones don’t resurface in town, headless?

Incredible as it may seem to others, the Abu Sayyaf problem in Sulu is not just about kidnapping and ransom demands. Like a highly toxic octopus, the Abu Sayyaf has spread its tentacles over every aspect of life in Sulu: governance, bureaucracy, teaching profession (it can actually dictate who can be appointed in government); politics (only candidates it supports can get elected, particularly in the most vital unit, the barangay); education (a college instructor gave a failing grade to a moron, and the following day he got shot right in the campus); even foreign aid—remember the three staffers of the International Red Cross who were abducted right on the grounds of the provincial capitol?

What makes this situation so heartrending is that this is a beautiful, richly endowed province with a magnificent history of bravery and indomitable courage, inhabited by an intelligent, hardworking people for whom life’s hardships are stoically taken as challenges; except that this ragtag band of criminals is holding this town and its people in its merciless grip with such impunity, and the government itself seems helpless.

In her recent visit to the country, the tourism minister of our neighbor-country Malaysia offered an innovative proposal that would engage her country and the Philippines in a coordinated tourism strategy, so that both countries would get a share of the US market (which is dominated by our country) and the European market (where Malaysia seems to have the edge). Well, Malaysians still speak English with a British accent and address you “Madame” even in the night market, while here in the Philippines, Filipinos call you “Lola.” The concept is quite simple: Each country would serve as the “stepping stone” to entice travelers to proceed to the other country, which could mean that tourists from the United States coming to the Philippines might just as well continue their journey to nearby Malaysia, and European tourists visiting Malaysia could just hop on a plane and proceed to our country.

Listening to her, I dared to dream.  Sulu would be that perfect “stepping stone” to and from Manila.

But—a very big but—this dream will remain just that, unless the government will do something bold and brave and lasting, to eliminate all criminal elements in Sulu, and—impose a total gun ban not just during elections, but at all times.

And with due respect to other government officials, I believe that at this time, only Senator Lacson and Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan can do such a task.

Please appoint Lacson.

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