BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi
There was no incoming howler, but
we woke up last September 13 to be told schools and government offices were
closed. Somebody had petitioned it as a holiday, supposedly to allow the Cordillera
to mark the 25th anniversary of the Mt. Data Peace Accord
signed by then President Corazon Aquino and rebel priest Conrado Balweg.
Except for its being declared a
holiday, there was hardly an event to mark whatever significance the
anniversary may have. Except that a press release from the Office of the
Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process announced the holding of a Conference
of Tribal Leaders (Among Di Cordillera) and an open forum at the Mt. Data
Hotel, the venue of the peace signing.
Good thing
they did not have that gong travelling around the Cordillera again, as they do
to mark Cordillera Day, or arrange a parade down Session Rd. where there’s
nothing to see but participants in “barong”, as if you never saw anybody
in that outfit before.
Many were
suddenly happy over the instant holiday they did not understand but welcomed as
a respite from school and office work.
In an exchange
of tokens to mark the peace pact 25 years ago, then President Aquino
handed Fr. Balweg an Armalite rifle and a rosary, while the rebel priest
presented her with a wooden Igorot shield and a head ax.
“During the
symbolic encounter, gongs were played and the uniformed combatants (of
Balweg’s Cordillera People’s Liberation Army) rested their rifles and
mimicked wild birds dancing,” recalled newsman Joel Arthur Tibaldo of the
Cordillera News Agency.
Despite the
holiday, most Cordillerans do not find significance in that peace pact. It’s
because beyond the holiday proclamation nobody’s telling them what the day meant
and should mean for this region’s struggle for autonomy and future. Like in
many ceremonials, it was enough that it was declared a holiday in the
Cordilllera, with or without the substance.
For sure, Fr.
Balweg, who broke away from the New People’s Army to address the Cordillera
issue from a native son’s perspective, saw it as a means to push self-rule in
this mountainous region.
Despite his
push and those of others and the declaration of the holiday, the Cordillera
today remains divided over the issue of autonomy. Even the government regional
directors, whose positions were created to push autonomy, are reluctant to
advocate self-rule for which their lofty positions were set up
Until now, even
Baguio mayor Mauricio Domogan, a staunch advocate of autonomy, said he has not
seen a copy of the agreement signed by President Aquino and Balweg.
“We should take
on from the points agreed during the sipat but can somebody give us a copy of
the agreement signed so we could proceed from there,” the mayor had said in
several forums on self-rule.
Quoting Fernando Bahatan, a
former director of the defunct Cordillera Executive Board, newsman Vincent
Cabreza of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said “at the 1986 sipat, President
Corazon Aquino was handed an outline of 26 demands that addressed “the
Cordillera problem.”
For sure, Fr.
Balweg signed the peace pact believing it would hasten his region’s quest for
autonomy that would finally empower the Cordillera to develop its water,
mineral, land and other resources for its own development and progress.
Most urgent and
relevant today to the issue of local empowerment through autonomy is the
relocation of the surviving small-scale mine workers in that fatal landslide in
Itogon, Benguet.
The municipal
government can hardly find a relocation site as most lands are still under
Benguet Corp. Despite having mined out Benguet’s gold,the mining firm holds on
to the land which mineral wealth sustained it for years.
Comparing how
the national government treats our region’s quest for self-rule to that of
Mindanao, it seems the Cordillera is now being taken for granted for keeping
true to the peace pact signed by Fr. Balweg and then President Aquino.
In the wake of
the armed conflicts in Mindanao, the latest of which was the occupation and
siege of Marawi, the national government seems bent on pushing the new autonomy
bill for Mindanao, if only to advance the peace in a region where numerous
peace pacts were previously signed and then violated.
Here in the
Cordillera, there was only one peace pact, the one signed by the late Fr.
Balweg and then President Aquino. True to that agreement, we, Cordillerans kept
the peace. That should give us the edge and the right to demand from the
national government its push for the Cordillera’s self-rule.
After all, we
kept the peace pact he signed with then Presient Aquino and Fr.Balweg 25 years
ago in Mt. Data.
Otherwise, it
might be relevant to go back to the pre-Mt. Data days for the national
government to hear our plea. – e-mail mondaxbench@yaqhoo.com for comments.
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