EDITORIAL - Naive government

It is good that the government has insisted that captured communist leaders Benito Tiamzon and his wife Wilma Austria are not entitled to any immunity. Had it said otherwise, it would have made the capture illegal and pave the way for the release of the couple.

And that would have dealt a very serious blow to both the fight against the communist insurgency and the morale of their captors, who spent years tracking the elusive couple down. And it would have made us the laughing stock of the world.

And why not? We have ousted a dictator and sued his family and then jailed two other presidents, and then grant two communist leaders immunity? We would have lost the last remaining thread of respect the world may still have for us.

We do not wish to make comparisons or any distinctions between the offenses committed by our past presidents and the captured communist leaders because that would only serve to detract us from the issue at hand, which is immunity. Immunity is not the same as a safe conduct pass, as mistakenly understood by some.

It is true Tiamzon and Austria were previously given safe conduct passes for as long as the peace talks between the government and the communists lasted. But the talks have long collapsed following the continued attacks launched by the rebels against government soldiers and even civilian targets.

Besides, it was a big mistake to give the Tiamzons any safe conduct passes because the reason for the privilege was based on the wrong premise. The passes were given because the Tiamzons were supposedly working as consultants for the communist negotiators during the peace talks.

How could the main leaders of the communists be used as consultants? Can Barrack Obama be a consultant for the US delegation to the United Nations? The Tiamzons and Obama are what they are in relation to the group or country they represent. Consultants are advisers to the king. The king cannot be an adviser to himself.

But because this government has always been a naive government, it allowed itself to be played by the communists into according the Tiamzons that privilege, which is however a whole lot better than giving up Mindanao to Muslim separatists, which is what this same naive government is all set and ready to do.