An Appeal for Our Leaders, bismonte@tribune.net.ph, news@tribune.net.ph,Sun, 18 Jun 2006

Dear Editors and friends,

I felt sad that the GMA regime is turning into a more fascist and authoritarian in its very nature. The War against the NPA since its appearance in the Philippines was not resolved by equivalent military force but significantly seen as a more fertile way to harvest more cadre and potential red fighters in the long run.

It will be best if GMA and her advisers improve the countryside and further address the socio-economic issues that produce these rebels to resolve not only the rebellion being waged by the radical left but also the conflict within her legitimacy since her own credibility to govern is already tainted with questions.

If GMA really love the value and the sanctity of life, any war to any form of human beings must be prohibited under her regime. The 1987 Constitution significantly denounce war as a policy, and yet GMA regime seems very confusing in her pronouncement in valuing life in the period when legislators rejected death penalty as a form of solving crime and social deviance.

I pray that GMA, including her generals and other former leftist advisers will realized that another undeclared or declared war will only ensure that today's conflict in some rural areas in the country will only be sustained in the next generation to come since this war will make the ground fertile enough for harvesting more rebellion.

I am a citizen of this country. And any form of violence whether it comes from the State or from presumed terrorists is not advisable. Enough blood has been wasted in our country. A significant number of the best and the brightest individuals in the country was already wasted because of useless conflict, assasination, abduction and liquidation both from the left, the right, church people, media men, students and many others.

I appeal as a citizen of this country to the NPA command and the Military generals that they should both see themselves as brothers and co-patriots of this country. May the lovers in peace in Philippine government resist this impending war against the left?

I believe that the State needs to defend the Republic, but communist are Filipinos too. And they are disillusioned Filipinos. When communists activists and red fighters can see that their countrymen cannot see the relevance of what they are fighting for because education and economic opportunities are accessible, government are run well by public officials and the economic growth are shared and felt by abandoned citizens, they will naturally die as a movement. But if we address the rebellion by another futile form of financing bullets, tanks, missiles and other killing machines, you only ensure that communist movements will multiply. I know that the democratic military generals know this!

What our NATIONAL AND local leaders need is to discuss among themselves on how to resolved the conflict in this country for the last 50 years so that in the next 50 years, younger generations will remember not the memories of war but the legacy of genuine reconciliation.

albert banico