Food and peace
By Noralyn Mustafa
Inquirer News Service

OUT of respect for and in empathy with the thousands of hapless victims of the series of weather disturbances in the past two weeks, I am limiting my comment on the badly scripted "briefing" staged by the administration (on what it has supposedly done to help the homeless and the hungry victims), probably in the hope it would somehow cover up the fact that the government is so bankrupt it could not even adequately respond to the calamity.

Except to say that the production gave me the creeps. The concept, format and the contrived phone-ins gave one an eerie sense of dejà vu. With an obviously disoriented, distracted and disinterested Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presiding, it looked and sounded so much like Ferdinand Marcos' last briefing before the fall of his regime.

Thank heaven, while Ms Arroyo's hordes of secretaries, assistants and advisers were planning the lighting and positioning of the mikes for the media show, Mel Tiangco of GMA 7's Kapuso Foundation and the volunteers
of the ABS-CBN Foundation were already packing relief goods; and the Inquirer, ABC 5's Tulong Bayan, and other private organizations were collecting contributions from concerned countrymen-here and abroad-who had enough confidence in these media outfits to give whatever they could.

But there is stark reality here staring us in the face. Reality of the kind that dictates basic survival, no less. What if, God forbid, natural calamities of such force and widespread destruction hit Mindanao, rendering futile our puny attempts at damage control? Crops destroyed, farmlands rendered useless by constant inundation?

It is no coincidence that the majority of the victims of typhoons, earthquakes and floods are food producers-the tillers of the soil and the fisherfolk. They suffer most in the aftermath of disaster: famine, disease, homelessness.

It does not help that as I am writing this, a reader sends a text message: "Did u know that GMA has an all female economic team? Finance Secretary Juanita Amatong, Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin, Rep. Joey Salceda, Neda Director Romy Neri, Trade Secretary Cesar Purisima, and Presidential Adviser Tommy Alcantara. Go figure why we have a weak economy."

"Male chauvinist pig!" I texted back.

But seriously, in the face of an inept, corruption-ridden national government that has lost the confidence of its constituency, a respected columnist disclosed that certain leaders of society are mulling over specific options to save the Filipino nation from perdition. They are thinking about the possibility of new elections, the formation by consensus of a transition government, and the drafting of a new Constitution.

Desperate situations call for desperate measures.

In the meantime, we should now fix our lenses and view Mindanao not just as the land of unfulfilled promise, or an excuse to invite foreign funding with impressive development plans; but as the land that may ultimately hold the hope for our survival.

This is not going to be achieved by reducing the internal revenue allotment of local governments, thus making the LGUs pay the price of the administration's wasteful spending. While the LGUs in Metro Manila bear with IRA reductions, it would almost be murder to impose IRA reductions on Mindanao's LGUs, especially those in the ARMM provinces, which are among the country's poorest.

For whatever their shortcomings and failures, the LGUs in Mindanao and Sulu remain the key to the ultimate solution of the region's greatest problem: peace and order.

In Sulu at least, local government officials, the religious community and the military are united in the quest for peace.
Last Dec. 16, just four days after the brutal killing of photojournalist Gene Boyd Lumawag, one in a series of unsolved murders last month, Mayor Hadji Suod Tan led town officials and a cross-section of residents in re-launching the town of Jolo as a zone of peace.

This was done in partnership with the Philippine-Canadian Local Government Support Group (ARMM), the Center for Peace and Development of Western Mindanao State University, and the Reach Out to Others Foundation Inc. Lending invaluable support to the pursuit of peace are the civil society groups. Foremost among them is the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, under Fr. Romeo Villanueva, OMI, which was established by the Oblates to uplift the marginalized in Sulu. This is just in addition to the earlier programs, some of which have been existing for decades. The provincial government, under the vibrant leadership of newly elected Gov. Benjamin Loong, is actively engaged in pursuing his vision of progress for the province, mainly through agricultural development and marine industries.

A showcase of Governor Loong's success in this effort is his BJ Coco Oil Mill in Indanan which, by the way, has been proposed as a Special Economic Zone. Sulu's chief executive has also purchased 15 farm tractors from Iran to be loaned out to the province's different municipalities.

Last October, Sulu hosted the 3rd ARMM Business Congress in coordination with the ARMM Business Council, the Sulu and Tawi-Tawi chapters of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Growth with Equity in Mindanao (GEM) of the USAID, the ARMM Department of Trade and Industry, the Regional Board of Investments and, of course, the Office of the Regional Governor.

Aside from the USAID, other foreign agencies like the Asia Foundation and JICA are helping Sulu get back on its feet after decades of destruction and neglect.

The local government and the people are doing their part. The least the national government can do is to increase its IRA, tenfold if possible.

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