Tragedies, natural or manmade, take their toll on many lives. In Zamboanga, where MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) forces continue to fight, soldiers, policemen, and MNLF members have died. The number of casualties is still rising.
In Olongapo, after heavy rains, landslides buried residents in mud, even as flash floods swept dead many others.
The only difference is that in Olongapo, it was nature’s wrath; and in Zamboanga, it was the wrath of a man, Nur Misuari, who felt he was shortchanged by the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro, and so decided to avenge his fate.
But he could have done the right thing—join the peace agreement, live a life of peace, and ride into the sunset of life admired for his gentlemanly and honorable act. But he chose to become a renegade, wreaking terror and violence that claimed precious lives and destroyed properties worth billions of pesos, not to mention economic loss. The cost of rehabilitation alone is estimated to reach P3.89 billion. What a loss!
If Misuari had chosen goodness over evil, his star would have shone brightly in the minds of Muslims and Christians and of all Filipinos. Misuari blew out the light of peace.
—JOSEPATH B. CAMERON,
josepath_cameron
@yahoo.com