Statement — Is it easier for government to buy guns than address roots of insurgency?

Something in the way President Gloria Arroyo inconsistently stated her position on the political killings now numbering around 700 throughout the country made us uncomfortable during her SONA last July 24.

She claimed to condemn the political killings but at the same time glorifying the number one suspect of the killings - Major General Jovito Palparan of the Army's 7th Infantry Division. What made us more suspicious is that Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, shortly after attending the SONA of the President, acknowledged and focused upon in the camera televised nationwide at that, met with all the barangay captains of Cebu province and "persuaded" them to support her total war campaign against insurgency.

A nationwide pattern is thus very evident in the way the total war strategy is being crafted. The Voices of Women for Human Rights (vow4hr) strongly believes that these developments are alarming for the following reasons:

1. Not a single case of political killings throughout the country has been solved. While the military and police are quick to deny their involvement on the killings, there seems to be no serious efforts to investigate and punish the perpetrators;

2. Most of those who are killed belong to legitimate people's organizations who are unarmed and cannot defend themselves.

But what is more alarming is the absence of a sense of history of our woman president who is blindly followed by her loyal supporters such as Governor Gwen Garcia. Former President Ferdinand Marcos also used force in his fight against insurgency.

Twenty years in fact of martial rule was spent for this and it proved to be a failure as the number of insurgents doubled.

Meanwhile, the roots of insurgency - poverty, landlessness, unemployment, graft and corruption, remain. It must be easier to buy bombs and guns rather than lift a finger to address the roots of insurgency. It must be as easier bribing bishops and/or building a megadome for the ASEAN meeting rather than spend money for OFWs caught in the Israel-Hezbollah war. Leny G. Ocasiones
Voices of Women for Human Rights (VOW4HR)