TOPIC: MINDANAO PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT

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SACA conducts School of Living Tradition in Basilan

Press Release

By: Abs Damahan

Sitio Look, Barangay Ettub-Ettub, Sumisip, Basilan…The Sahaya Al-Nour Community Association (SACA) has conducted School of living tradition on Yakan Song and Instrument- playing last March 10, 2012. Spearheaded by no less than the President Majid A. Nur of SACA.The guest is from National Commission for Cultures & Arts (NCCA) was represented by Mr. Ammalun Salahuddin Yakan cluster head based in Basilan. The participants composed of fifteen students who played the Yakan Music & instruments. Their cultural masters are Lolo Aharain Arasalun and Rende Appotoh belongs to the women group.

The activities were conducted started from March 10, 2012 up to the present to highlights the primitive Yakan song and the Arts. The community participants are around 40 persons more or less. The program of activities started from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM all of them are well participated in the said activities.

The importance of this projects all folks is reminded how the cultures of the forefather be preserved to the present and next generation of the Yakan tribe. The Yakan music and the arts are almost in extinction without the supports from the National Commission and the Arts (NCCA).

The place where the programs is conducted is a very remote barangay has no projects implemented before and this is the first time programs and projected is being implemented in the area.

The community has valued this noble project because they felt that they are part of the government and society.  To continue and sustain this valuable cultural education the community would change and the local folks would not easy prey into the lawlessness and illegal activities.

To revive this culture practises the youth will encourage to become a good citizen of our society participating in all endeavour that will enshrine to the benefits of the native cultural preservation of the entire province.

Negotiating the Good Friday Agreement

Negotiating the Good Friday Agreement

 By: Fr. Eliseo Mercado, OMI

With the peace negotiations entering a sort of ‘winter’ season due to colliding positions on the terms of possible political settlement, International Alert in partnership with UK Embassy invited the Rt. Honorable Paul Murphy, Member of the British Parliament and former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Wales.

MP Paul Murphy belongs to the Labor Government of both PM Tony Blair and PM Gordon Brown. It was this popular Labor government under Mr. Blair that negotiated the Good Friday Agreement that has laid the peace formula not only between the warring Unionist party (Protestant) and the Sein Fein (Catholic) but also shaping the relations between and among Great Britain, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The case of Northern Ireland rings a familiar chord for the peoples of Southern Philippines albeit the differences in ‘color’, ‘shape’, religions, ideology and cultures. The many similarities touch on the relations of minority and majority cum the controversial wealth and opportunity sharing, and compounded by religious identities that are more tied to cultural ideologies and their popular expressions, including the use of violence.

Mr. Murphy’s short visit is simply to share with us – stakeholders to peace in Mindanao both in the national and regional levels - a model of peace negotiation that has proven successful not only in terms of signing a peace agreement but also implementing it with political will on the ground as workable formula for wealth and power sharing.

I cannot help but observe that the man who provided the environment and the ‘push’ is an ardent Catholic who received a papal knighthood for his peace work in Northern Ireland.

Some of the similarities between Northern Ireland and Southern Philippines are on issues touching the relations not only between minority (Catholics) and majority (Protestants) but also between the national government (the British Parliament) and the six counties (four Protestants and two Catholics) that formed Northern Ireland.

The above relationship in the recent past was marred by conflict and injustice of varying shades of colors of injustices and ideologies translated and expressed in more familiar concepts like political power, economic development and cultural identities (British Crown for the Unionists and the Republic for Sein Fein).

The other noteworthy similarity in the Northern Ireland conflict was the fact that for decades the conflict in the Northern Ireland remained distant not only to the Government of Great Britain but also to the British Constituency. It actually communicated a subtle message to the effect saying that so long as the killings, the carnage and the violations of basic rights remained in Belfast or Londonderry or in any part of Northern Ireland, the peoples of Great Britain continued with ‘business as usual’.

Things changed when the Irish Republican Army or IRA brought the conflict to London itself. The US was also brought to the picture, not only because of the historical and cultural ties to Ireland and Great Britain but more so because of the many Irish Americans’ support for the struggle of their kin and kith in the North.

What is noteworthy in the making of the Good Friday Agreement is the political will of the two governments (United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland). The two leaders, UK PM Mr. Blair and Republic of Ireland PM Mr. Beartie, were on board all the way as the full time and elected peace negotiators ironed out the formula of wealth and power sharing between the warring Protestant and Catholic groups. The US sent a powerful mediator in the person of Senator George Mitchell, with the full backing and support not only of the sitting US President (both President Clinton and later President G. W. Bush) but also by the entire US Congress. The role and support of the entire European Union were also much felt for the simple reason that the two major protagonists, the UK and the Republic of Ireland, are members of the same EU.

The equally important ingredient that went into the making of the Good Friday Agreement was the TRUST and the RESPECT accorded to one and all by the full time and elected negotiators, mediators, Governments and all stakeholders with few exceptions.

What is crucial is the fact that the Good Friday agreement is “HOMEGROWN”. NO IMPOSED peace agreement anywhere and at anytime is sustainable! The Good Friday Agreement is shaped by the stakeholders themselves through their elected negotiators (with real constituencies on the ground) and facilitated by a powerful US mediator and fully supported by the two major protagonists.

The Good Friday Agreement gives HOPE to our own peace process now experiencing some difficulties. Mr. Murphy’s sharing is a successful PEACE Story. Though we are not ‘copy cats’ of Northern Ireland, no doubt, we can draw concrete lessons from it if we are looking for a fresh wind blowing our own peace story... else we freeze in the winter of the peace talks!

Posted by Jun Mercado at 18:59 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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The substate dream

The substate dream

By: Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas. SJ

Philippine Daily Inquirer

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The Economics of Brinkmanship, The Mindanao bench

By: Aminullah Alonto Lucman

There now appears a trend for world class leaders show mettle, brinkmanship to be the statesman not the onlooker, the hands-on individual ready and willing face up to the hard core challenge. US President Obama is one such, having brokered the impossible keep tab of the Republican majority in the lower house of the US congress finally make them agree to what he feels is an acceptable compromise avoid a shutdown of the US economy because of the debt ceiling he seeks, and now the downgrades.

S&P declares the US no longer a triple A economy perhaps to suggest rough days ahead to selling American free market leadership, in other words, one simply can’t win them all but President Obama for all intent need to win another term as US president, so guys brace yourselves.

Brinkmanship for politicians is the goal to ultimately advance, at least from how it appears. And I see no downgrade in any agenda that is yet up their sleeves, their likes just stays on and on. So they make the gamble; in the case of America they’re always out there scouting for lambs to sacrifice keep their standing as rock-solid and as reliable as the rock of Gibraltar, pray to the gods of gold and silver, for the ultimate invincibility. But like Achilles, there is this one faulty vulnerability that now we have come to know, bad economics.

Big business is the American forte, but the one that excites me is what could have been the dirge from those known to jump with glee see America teeter in failure, superpowers themselves former cold war enemies, America’s nemesis now to have wagered their wealth too on the American dream in huge trillions. Just as we now know of it, they cannot afford to see America fail; they of course have their money gambled on the American invincibility, really big money for they too believe America is good business.

So why would somebody from Mindanao, like myself be embroiled in any of such highly intricate dichotomy of the economic divide, and the kind of leadership-quality they possess that once upon a time almost devastated earth. This I mean the divide between colors of red and the multitude of hues on the side to subvert them, bloodletting for decades of the cold war era claiming millions of lives in inert military measures and countermeasures, blood bathing that it was, all wars and no reprieve.

Stagnated unmoving lives, clustered wars in stasis, static growth for the third struggling world nowhere to go but down under, so the cold war did some very serious damage, made lives of people really miserable.

In Mindanao, war from whilst it hath brewed was never probed up till now, and in the land of the rising sun the light has shown its mantle, peace may be at hand darker alleys illuminated, pathfinders to just gainfully achieve tranquility from amongst petrified people, now to count as human beings wanting tranquil coexistence, and in earnest it has just begun. So far, so good, now we have the leadership quality emerging to be eager to join in, be part of the quality, world-class leadership.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the first attempts at sociological analysis were prompted by the need to explain two great waves of change that were sweeping across Europe: namely, industrialization and the expansion of democracy and human rights in the wake of the American and French revolutions.

The leadership, squashed extracts from this phenomenal social evolution in these era, produced cunning, cold blooded leaders, took human frailty as tools and resources, the primeval alibi for more conquests, more territories. Industrial superiority is matched with equally devastating military power, tools of death that as we know took millions upon millions of unsuspecting people in two world wars.

Auguste Comte, in his theory of social dynamics, proposed that societies progressed through a series of predictable stages based on the development of human knowledge. Herbert Spencer offered a theory of change that was evolutionary, based on population growth and structural differentiation.

Karl Marx contended that the most significant social changes were revolutionary in nature, and were brought about by the struggle for supremacy between economic classes. The general tendency of nineteenth-century theories of social change was towards historicism and utopianism.

The 21st century in abrupt social changes, the dichotomy, the derisive contradictions, Karl Marx theory of the classless society to achieve economic and military stability and power no longer find relevance. State control has become the essence of societal development, the new Marxist platform as the Maoist dogma, as platforms emerging to be measures for economic predictability and supremacy, no longer the exportation of the static ideology and military prowess but goods to vend and money to be had.

In the NEW China, it is more visibly a pragmatic influence over vast free market economies hence stakes her claim more in essence as majority stock holder than the bully that she was; the contradictions also may have become the paradigm shift to have altered Russia following the breakup of what was USSR. Russia, as a free voting Marxist orientated democracy, a free market economy to compete with the industrialized world, has now to have predictably geared towards more to job creation rather than control over vast territories; this is micro management where predictability is best managed and given propriety, so that now Russia has more billionaires than ever imagined.

Recent statements from the Russian president chiding long-time ally Syria over the suppression of legitimate dissent may perhaps be glaringly Russia’s micro managing foreign policy; this would have been unthinkable during the USSR days. And unlike the old USSR, today’s nuclear arsenals belonging to Russia would rather be utilized to bargain rather than regain stature as a military power, and these are for purely economic reasons micro-manage Russia on way to clinching economic power of scale just like the New China.

To propose that societies progressed through series of predictable stages based on the development of human knowledge in Comte’s theory of social dynamics negates predominating environs pervading in much of today’s social evolution.

19th century social sciences to have carved much of civilization’s predictability to creating macro management skills determine how conflicts are ventured in and into bigger world wars to be able to accurately control and create economy of absolute scale have now to have dissipated into a singular societal entity, the global cyber society.

This is the 21st century invariables spreading the variability of real time communication and connectivity, Twitterology and Facebookism, the emerging isms of now’s contemporary 21st century human evolution.

Predictability, in much of today’s dichotomy in the present-day manic debauchery yet persistent from amongst mostly third world leaders, is a divide between two contradictions, lies and truth. But awakening from amongst people sought the veritable, very puritan struggle; it is People Power in the spirit of true worship, the 21st century matrix.

Awakening in the minds of plenty, the present-day 21st century people power dawned on them the need to be human, not tools of gangsterism in the evolutionary progression of society and the ensuing dirt-bound politicians sans trespasses.

Dirt-bound politicians with the long-winded greed regressed to have become the monopolist tool, laundered, siphoned-off resources stolen from government, obfuscation, that sought to harness, bequeath of them the advancement of despotism and big business control, tools of the very few. These are what's left of the long gone cold war era, bloody and tormenting era, the antidote, antecedent contrived to be the formulae ward off Marxist influence in Indochina, much of Southeast Asia and the Americas. This is the other side of the 21st century divide, the contrasts of lies.

Vestiges of the cold war era now to transform into near humanist, rights-orientated platforms cater to demands for more visible freedom and human rights for purely the advancement of the human race. This phenomenon has now tractably to have been the 21st century totemic transformation to hanker on just the truth, nothing short of truth.

Despotism began to grimace through in February of 1986 in the Philippines. Finding power in truth, people en mass peacefully converged in that February month, 1986, in celebration of finding just the truth, now the explicitly, overtly all encompassing People Power movements all over the world; it breached the Berlin wall, decimated the USSR and now in finality, the Arab awakening, but are we knowing where will this end to?

Herbert Spencer, a social scientist, offered a theory of change that was evolutionary, based on population growth and structural differentiation.

The embodiment the Herbert Spencer theory proposes is for government to be tractable, it need to undergo reorientation in distributing resources, locate or relocate population densities in conjunction with growth, dispose or replace, abbreviate or altogether discard existing infrastructure or that provide one if there is none, to be able to enable with maintaining a system or involve in systemic changes tidy up population growth in conjunction with the economic realm.

It is economic fundamentals that permeate to be the logical factor whether we emerge as a nation or down the abyss as a divided people in unending tumult. Maybe Mindanao & Sulu to even come out entirely separate, an independent nation. The social science of giving the right provision, the right solution, and the right measure of truth is I think what Herbert Spencer is meaning to say. That one simply makes the changes to be able to measure up to the challenge, this is dauntingly the ordinary folk’s 21st century abode, and you guys better believe it.