This developed as Col. Dickson Hermoso, military adviser of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp) assured that the military had issued warnings to lawless elements and coddlers of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) but admitted they are barred from pursuing the bandits behind the October killing of 19 Army special forces in Sitio Bakisung, Barangay Cambug Albarka, Basilan.
Denying there was an intelligence failure that led to the slaying of government troopers, Hermoso underscored the primacy of the peace process pursuant to President Aquino’s position based on “all out justice.”
“We should give peace a chance, some space to work on while we’re thoroughly drawing a plan to deal with the situation militarily,” he said, stressing further that protests against MILF violations of the cease-fire agreement had already been lodged before the Joint AFP-MILF Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities.
Ramos stressed, before his departure to China and Macau to meet with senior government officials, that “confidence-building measures, consensus benchmarks, cost-effective programs and, most important, political will are called for—but war is not an option.”
“Considering the complicated national and global contest of today, it is time to regroup the 90-million strong Philippine team—to consult as stakeholders, and find the best approach, solutions to our immediate and long-term problems,” he said.
“Unless our elected leaders and the negotiators on both side of the GRP-MILF peace process play the Mindanao contests according to the best interests of our people, the outcome may well be ‘One Dream, Two Philippines,’” Ramos said, repeating a previous statement he issued in his newspaper column.
Referring to the statistics provided by the Opapp during a congressional briefing, Ramos noted that from 1970 to 1996, some P73 billion were spent by the military for arms/ammunitions in the campaign against the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front, including the MILF, on top of huge loss of lives and socioeconomic costs.
Ramos, also a former chief of staff of the Armed Forces, said that during former President Joseph Estrada’s anti-MILF war policy, launched in April 2000, some P1.8 billion was spent or an estimated average of P20 million daily.
“Despite the heavy spending, that [military] offense still cost the lives of 431 soldiers and 624 wounded. Moreover, damage to infrastructure was pegged at P202 million while P125 million worth of crops and livestock, including fisheries were destroyed.
“The direct cost of renewed Mindanao war from April 2000 to December 2003 amounted to, at the very least, P2.3 billion, or an average of P52 million monthly for that 44 month period,” Ramos said.
“The social cost are even more glaring,” he added, noting that per DSWD figures, starting in 2000, about a million persons were displaced or rendered homeless.
Due to the crackdown on the Abu Sayyaf Group the following year, more than 200,000 persons were dislocated, and that number increased in 2003 with an additional 750,000 evacuees.
“From 2000 to 2004, therefore, some 2 million persons became ‘internal refugees,’ losing both homes and livelihood.”
The former president said that the 2005 Human Development Report records that due to the all-out war, investment growth in Mindanao plunge from plus 17 percent to minus 5 percent in 2000-2001. Investment continued to decline in Southern Philippines resulting in negative growth in 2002 and slid down more in 2003 when the Buliok operations happened.
“Considering both explicit and implicit development economic losses, Opapp reported from 1975 to 2002, losses in Mindanao ranged from P5 billion to P10 billion annually, which equated to the astronomical total of P135 billion to P270 billion for 27 years.
(Recto Mercene and Zaff Solmerin)
