THE USE of violence is forbidden in a modern and civilized society. Violence embodies everything evil, vicious and repulsive.
However, our local communists have chosen the path of violence. They live and nurture themselves through violence. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has directed all units of its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), to carry out more frequent attacks on defenseless civilians, Indigenous Peoples, and security forces.
They demonstrated this by murdering two soldiers who were on their way to Sipalay City in Negros Occidental to help organize a local peace engagement. They were not engrossed in combat operations and were dressed in civilian attire when brutally killed.
The military officers postulated that this was retaliatory action for the NPA’s defeats following the discovery and seizure of their armaments.
The NPA has strongly advocated violence, which is no longer acceptable today. Violence cannot solve any nation’s problems, much less when it involves killings, ambushes, and attacks on civilians and those in authority positions.
The NPAs grew up in a time when extremism was the norm. Their call for more attacks should be met with calls to “say no to armed struggle”, a call echoed by many Filipinos who value peace. – KAREEN ASISTIO, Polytechnic University of the Philippines
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The fine art of straddling
“STRADDLING” means standing on an issue while spreading your legs wide apart so that one leg is on one side and the other on the opposite side. It is a posture of non-committal, of ambivalence, a convenient tool for ducking a challenge. In Tagalog they call it “sumasaklang”, in Ilonggo, “nagabalakang”.
This is the kind of diplomatic game BBM plays when he shuffles between the camps of two superpowers – one an old friend who needs us and the other a goodwill pretender who covets our patrimony.
I hate to be in the shoes of the President who has to apply band-aid solutions to a festering wound which he knows may develop into gangrene and cause the amputation of our national dignity.
Sooner or later he will have to take a clear stand. It looks tough but it will actually be easy when he responds with courage and patriotism to the question, “what is best for my country and my people?
My mother’s uncle, the patriot and resistance leader Sen. Tomas Confesor, was once exhorted in an impassioned letter by an Iloilo governor to collaborate with the Japanese forces in order to save civilians from further harm.
Senator Confesor, in a reply enshrined in the US Library of Congress, refused and wrote back to the Governor, “Manliness is the crying need of the hour.”
The time is near when BBM will have come out of diplomatic pleasantries, call the bluffs, and bite the bullet. I wish him luck. – JOSE B. MAROMA JR., Cabatuan, Iloilo
