Are we going to the dogs?

I WOULD not have wanted to write this but from what I have observed, there are certain basics that people who supported and who still support the President-elect of our country should consider.

While we all want the eradicate crime, especially drugs and corruption in government, many still believe in the rule of law.  I really do not understand why people tend to support summary execution of criminals, of course, without regard to the rule of law.

Some of those who may have been blinded by the “savior of the nation” who promised the unthinkable are observably now acting as if they were the president-elect.

Some of those people tend to agree at the flick of a finger those blogs and troll-created sites and info materials and dismiss as sheer biased those from legitimate sources.

Take for example those who are employees in the pre-need business who blindly believe that President Benigno Aquino III has done nothing to improve the economy of the country.

And there are those who are in the academe who blindly support the president-elect unmindful of the effects of what they post on Facebook that are out of the ordinary to the formation of young students in their schools.

Sir, I did not vote for the President-elect but since the people have already spoken and opted for the “bad mouth over a bad government,” to borrow their rationalization, then probably they should now think of the effects of what they tell the young of this nation.

The TV advertisement featuring children of young age asking questions like, “di ba masama ang magmura?” would have been a wake-up call to the blinded followers but no, they trained their guns on the TV stations that aired those ads.

Then there are those whom I have earlier known to soft-spoken and well-mannered but when they defend the President-elect, they burn bridges as if no other person is saying the right things but them.

And would you believe that certain drug lords have offered one billion pesos for the head of the President-elect and his would-be PNP chief?  I believe those “offers” were clever concoctions of the Internet warriors of the President-elect.

I am worried what will happen to the country under a leadership that has not shown any tinge of maturity and inclusivity.  I hope I am wrong for the good of my country. –Romanito Conteras, romanitoconteras@gmail.com

Disrespectful and Insulting

THE Rural Missionaries of the Philippines-Northern Mindanao Region (RMP-NMR) is one with the Higaonon evacuees from Lagonglong, Misamis Oriental in their demand for the respect of their rights.

Almost a year since they last sought sanctuary at the Provincial Capitol Grounds in Cagayan de Oro City, our fellow Lumad brothers and sisters have once again preferred the cold concrete of the city to the comfort of their homes. And again, they have come down for the same reason–the military operation in their communities.

This is the fourth that they were forced to leave their ancestral lands. RMP-NMR is afraid that the statistics of internally displaced communities have only cemented the impunity of no less than the state forces – our state forces, forces we feed with our taxes.

We no longer say that we are alarmed by the acts of the military. We are well past the reaction of alarm, even past the reaction of outrage. It is with sadness that we have now acknowledged that these military operations and consequent human rights violations have come to define our state forces. Hiding behind the veneer of state defense, the military is actually a force of destruction for our communities that are on the margins of society.

We do not know how this institution, put up to serve the peoples of the Philippines, can be very disrespectful to the point of being insulting to the peoples it should be assisting. First they brush aside the concerns raised by the community when they said they feared the presence of the military among their homes. They illogically insisted to go house to house when the indigenous community had said they were not welcome to stay. Then they mocked the evacuees by staging concerts, asking for donations for the evacuees – none of the money of course going to the families.

But while we say that the Armed Forces of the Philippines has been predictably abusive and offensive, it is not with exhaustion that we condemn their atrocities once more – and will continue to do so as long as these keep on recurring.

We are now in a state of transition from one government administration to the next. While some state leaders have changed, many faces have remained in position. No structure has changed after the elections. The structure that has allowed the impunity of state forces and the repression of the poor Lumad continues to be in place.

We want to express not just our support for our Lumad brethren who continue, despite the odds against them, to fight and assert their rights. We also wish to challenge the incoming administration to address this structural oppression that has weighed down on our poor for so long. We wish to challenge the incoming officials elect to make it their concern when the indigenous communities, who proudly resisted the waves of colonizers, now prefer to seem like mendicants in the urban haze, feeling safer in the unfamiliar streets than in their ancestral lands.

The RMP-NMR will always be with our Lumad brethren in their assertion of their rights–to their lands, to their culture, and most especially to their right to self determination. We will always journey with them in their desire for life, and make certain that they have it to the full. –Sr. Ma. Famita N. Somogod, MSM Coordinator, RMP-NMR Inc.