A time for redemption

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

GIVEN the results of the dialogue initiated by the Moro community leaders in Pangasinan, we have reason to be assured that there will be no immediate spillover of the violence being witnessed in Marawi City.

Not soon anyway but the likelihood will always be there. One has to understand the kinship culture that binds Moros as a people why the possibility is always there.

For good or bad, Moros in one community are averse to telling on each other.  They are family!  They are quick to defend their communities in public against any negative public perception but in the same breath, they leave it to others to prove them wrong.

A case in point was the readiness and willingness of Moro community leaders in the past to participate in signing of covenants and “memorandum of understanding” to support campaigns contra illegal drugs, years before President Duterte declared his war on drugs.

It will be recalled that for years, PDEA confirmed that Moro communities in many towns here were notorious for being the source of shabu trading. In Dagupan City, Bonuan Binloc, Bonuan Gueset and Barangays 2 & 3 were listed by PDEA as hotbeds.

In fact, after events that showed photo ops of past city mayors with Moro community leaders were published and announced, shabu and marijuana trading continued without letup. PDEA had long suspected that the illegal trading was protected and backed by tacit agreements between the barangay officials and the Moro community leaders.

In Bonuan Binloc, a Moro leader then never lived up to his word. In fact, his relatives turned out to be the major drug pusher in Pangasinan. But was the Moro leader and the barangay kapitan made to account for it? No. The same situation in other cities was reported by the PDEA and the police.

Note that when the war on drugs was declared by Mr. Duterte, many Moro communities broke up. Many residents suspected of being involved in shabu trading became the subject of PNP’s ‘Tokhang’ and they quickly abandoned their homes.

Sadly, the Moro communities and their leaders lost a lot of credibility in the ongoing war on drugs.

But now that the incorrigible drug players among them have left their midst, perhaps the remaining and new Moro leaders will look at the recent dialogue as an opportunity to redeem themselves as a truly peace-loving community.

I hope and pray that the Moro leaders who faced PNP Provincial Director P/Sr. Supt. Ronald Lee are ready to be accountable for their pledges of cooperation and collaboration this time.

Or their words will never be trusted again.

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EXCURSION, NOT JUNKET. The congressmen who staged that junket trip, oops, I meant ‘excursion’… or caravan inspection trip, around the central-northern Luzon should not have happened.

It was not only a pure waste of public funds but aggravated traffic conditions wherever they went.

I was traveling from Manila to Dagupan last Thursday when I caught up with the caravan of first class buses and brand new vans at the Petron station on NLEX. For a while I thought there was a product launching in the area only to find scores of tarps around the premises welcoming Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and his party. I found myself in the staging area of the congressmen’s caravan of more than 30 vehicles.

Being VIPs, their vehicles traveling north were given all the space in the expressway to move in an orderly motorcade fashion. To do that, the phalanx of Highway Patrol Group and NLEX patrol units had to stop and block the vehicles of ordinary folks preventing them from mixing it up with the VIP convoy! That, naturally and immediately, led to almost a half-a kilometer long line of stalled vehicles on the five-lane expressway until the last VIP vehicle left the Petron station!

And Messrs. Alvarez and Rudy Fariñas want us to believe that doing the trip was a sacrifice on their part! Obviously being VIPs, they never look back to see how they inconvenience their constituents whose money they splurge along the way. 

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MORE TREE MURDERS COMING. I also don’t know what gave them the idea that all roads leading to the north should be widened to 4 lanes when they had all the highway to themselves, what with police cars and motorcycles clearing the highway for their exclusive access. And yet, that knee-jerk impression of the congressmen was hailed as one of the more important learning experience of the traipsing congressmen. Duh?

As one might have expected, not one of the congressmen in the caravan expressed concern that the suggested complete widening of the Manila North Road would lead to the murder of thousands more of century-old tress that beautifully line the highway all the way to Laoag City.

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BAD BUT STILL GOOD. But even after all that, the idea of an ‘excursion’ is not really a bad idea.

It’s a good idea for all congressmen in Pangasinan to stage a similar caravan among themselves.  It’d be a good opportunity for our congressmen to agree on a unified position for legislation to improve the livelihood in the province. 

For instance, they can all agree to sponsor a bill that will ensure cheaper and more efficient electricity in all towns and cities, or fast track the passage of a crop insurance bill to protect our farmers against impact of calamities and usurious lenders.

Or a law that will enable the province to develop its system of rivers in order to minimize flooding in the towns and cities.

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BUSIER PNP.  It is indeed, assuring to see PNP Provincial Director Ronald Lee taking no chances in seeing the conflict in Marawi City spilling over to our area.

He, better than anyone, knows and understands that all it takes is one secret operative of Maute-ISIS assisted by one secret sympathizer, a bomb-maker, one cellphone and a targeted crowded place with little or no security to terrorize the whole province.

But while he’s at it, I hope he has not lost sight of the fact that the drug lords are again exploiting the situation, the lack of focus on the war on drugs caused by the distraction.

Our PNP has its hands full. The citizenry should help by looking out for both Maute sympathizers and drug pushers!

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