Think about it
The May election and the Mindanao challenge
By Jun Velasco
ASIDE from the automation polls anxiety, the Filipino electorate will have to tackle the social volcano in Mindanao.
We don’t see it easily, in concrete terms in this part of the country, but like the thief you already knew who had bagged your jewels away, the issue stares us in the face like a boil, like an unwanted angst; frightening, a dread which we just leave to fate or chance, bahala na.
Friday morning, we bumped into Congressman Ompong Plaza at a Quezon City hotel, who was armed with combustible issues that should prick the conscience of those tasked to govern this nation.
He said, without batting an eyelash, that in spite of the glowing rhetoric about filling the socio economic breach that separates Mindanao from the mainland, the howling place is a “promised land,” a victim of broken promises.
Most of you must have gone to Mindanao, shocked at those young kids with armalites on their shoulders. The gun, they say, has become a status symbol in Mindanao.
And, after getting the shock of our lives over the bizarre and barbaric assault on humanity in the recent Maguindanao massacre, we go back to what Ompong Plaza, who is gunning for senator, laments as the great divide in the Filipino psyche that treats Mindanao’s old issues — poverty, lawlessness, misrepresentation in the national government — cavalierly.
In his dialogue with Pangasinan newsmen earlier, senatoriable Plaza intimated that the coming May elections will be a defining moment for a Philippine leader to champion — with a dash of finality — the real and hard issues that have consigned it to where it is, a “promised land!”
Ompong said, and we agree, that the inequality that bedevils the Southern peninsula should be the crux of Philippine governance.
It’s true that Mindanao has sired many national leaders of note — the Pimentels, Pelaezes, Dimaporos, Guingonas, Zubiris, etcera… but it hasn’t gone over the hump yet, confirming the theory that it has remained and will remain that way forever — a victim of broken promises.
Now enters Ompong, a close buddy of Bebot Villar and Guv’nor Spines, who brandishes a vow to make a difference if he makes it in the May elections. He will be a new and real voice of a forsaken Mindanao. No, he will make a new deal for Mindanao and not to allow it to slide to oblivion. That’s the other name for separation.
Let’s prevent it.
Notes: Conversation between Gibo & Noynoy
G: “I’ve law degree from UP”
N: “My mom is Cory”
G: “I’m a bar topnotcher”
N: : My fader is Ninoy”
G: “I’ve a master’s degree Harvard”
N: “KRIS my sis!”
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