Only 17 months to disarm ARMM

Will President Noynoy Aquino’s probers of the Sendong disaster tell him the truth? That is, that the principal culprit is right under his nose: the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council? A clue to the NDRRMC’s culpability: in clever disguise of its failures, it is loudly whining to forget reproach and focus only on aiding the victims.

By its name, the NDRRMC is tasked not only to respond to calamity, as its precursor National Disaster Coordinating Council did. It also must mitigate the potential casualties.

From reports on Storm Sendong, the NDRRMC clearly failed in both missions. There were no flood warnings in Cagayan de Oro-Iligan, food distribution to victims was chaotic, and medicines and body bags were lacking. Its dismal preparedness and response matched the tragic combination of heavy downpour, high tide and darkness. Over-silted rivers and tributaries spilled into villages in a matter of minutes. Mudslides, boulders and freshly cut timber toppled hundreds of homes. Meaning, logging, destructive mining, quarrying, river panning and littering, squatting, and substandard homebuilding — all illegal — were going on. More than a thousand residents perished; property and infrastructures sustain multibillion-peso damage.

The NDRRMC consists of 21 Aquino Cabinet secretaries, and 17 presidential bureaucrats, advisers and allied local political leaders. All abetted the lawbreakers. They ignored the detailed municipal and city-district geo-hazard maps that the Mines and Geosciences Bureau had drawn as far back as 2003. They learned not from the lessons of Ormoc, Ginsaugon, Infanta-Real, Cagsawa, and Ondoy-Pepeng.

The Aquino admin cannot say it only inherited the problems from its transactional predecessor. The NDRRMC members are its appointees, sitting there for 18 months already. They had bungled their jobs in recent losses of lives and property from typhoon floods in Central Luzon and Cagayan Valley, and mudslides in the Cordilleras, Agusan and Surigao. If Aquino must sue anyone as he aims to, it’s them.

The problem is systemic. Aquino probably knows it; hence, his acknowledgment that the government didn’t do enough to prevent the tragedy. Sendong will recur so long as officials think that Filipinos who lose loved ones, homes and livelihoods from preventable, reducible disasters can be assuaged with a bag of rice and a bottle of water.

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President Aquino has ordered acting governor Mujiv Hataman to stop all logging in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao. The ARMM provisional head says that in their earlier talks, he was instructed as well to end corruption and violence.

It’s a tough challenge. But the people of the five predominantly Muslim and impoverished provinces — Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi — deserve a break. The lawlessness in the ARMM stems from the feudal system that political leaders maintain.

Descendants of datus (tribe leaders of old), pols encourage the keeping of long arms by the men folk, whom they call upon to fight for them in ridos (clan wars). Such disputes are usually over land, in which the fighters are granted dwellings but never ownership. The political kingpins promote economic dependence and political patronage. Fealty to them is repaid in the form of jobs in the municipio or capitolio.

To feed and clothe the private armies and poor constituents, the warlords provide not education and entrepreneurial support. Only the political elite is afforded college education to become lawyers, engineers and businessmen. They use such training to run crime syndicates. Thus abound in the ARMM woodcutting, mining, quarrying, narco-trading, gunrunning, dynamite-cyanide fishing, wildlife trafficking, smuggling, and kidnapping for ransom.

The recent abduction of foreigners in Lanao is a grim example. A political family had masterminded it, military intelligence says, to win favors from Malacañang by staging a mock rescue of the victims.

Upheaval of feudal ways is needed. There was a spark of hope when the revolutionary Moro National Liberation Front took over the ARMM for a while. But even its 1996-2001 tenure was merely a transfer of power from one fiefdom to another. Teachers were still appointed to public schools not based on training but connection to rebel chieftains. Dependence and patronage went on due to the ignorance and penury.

Hataman’s caretaker term would be for only 17 months — clearly too short to change the ARMM completely. Longer-tenured leaders, to be elected at the same time as national officials in May 2013, are needed for transformation. Another hope is seen if the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, presently striving to reunite with its parent MNLF, forges peace with the government. One of the settlement offers is for it to be elected to govern and expand the region. But that’s still a big if.

Hataman can pave the way for the long-term rulers by enforcing the law. Using might against the loggers, whom Aquino has banned nationwide, will send the message that all politically-backed syndicates are targets. So will cracking the whip on kickback collectors and outright public fund thieves.

Hataman’s toughest job will be to get the loose firearms registered, or else confiscated. There is no exemption from gun laws in the ARMM. All firearms must be licensed; taking out of residences requires special permits. An ongoing amnesty can enable the men folk to register more than the usual one long and one short arm. Hataman knows he must start with the political warlords. The Department of Interior and Local Governments is to hold a regional peace and order summit next month, with gun control part of the agenda.

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