Who broke the peace?

Just because Filipinos are angry and want justice for the slaughter and desecration of the bodies of the 44 slain members of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force in an ambush by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters doesn't mean they are pushing for and would relish an all-out war to be waged against the rebels.

Just because Filipinos want somebody to be held accountable for the tragedy owing to the operational lapses resulting from an illegal need for secrecy - and all indications point to Noynoy Aquino, who as commander-in-chief is the most likely culprit - doesn't mean politics is being introduced to color what is an otherwise great national tragedy.

Just because Filipinos want to subject the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law, which Noynoy wants passed warts and all, for no other reason than he wants to leave that as his only legacy when he steps down in 2016, to a more strident review in light of the latest evidence that the rebels do not deserve the tremendous concessions the BBL will bestow on them doesn't mean they do not want lasting peace.

Filipinos, or at least those who have remained law-abiding despite all the challenges that life has thrown at them, want peace. To say that they do not is both an insult and a demeaning of the common values they hold in their hearts. Intense emotions and high passions born of the moment's tragedies do not in any way diminish the longing for peace. That is always the pursuit of ordinary men.

But just because the average Filipino, who would rather bow his head in honest endeavor than take up arms, is committed to the pursuit of peace doesn't mean he should come begging for it. It doesn't mean he must drop to his knees in order that the trigger finger of a Muslim rebel might be stayed and the gun barrel pressed to his head might not blow away his brains.

Ordinary Filipinos should not come begging for peace for the simple reason that they never broke the peace in the first place. Ordinary Filipinos were not the ones who took up arms against their government. Ordinary Filipinos are not the ones who are slaughtering their soldiers and their policemen. Ordinary Filipinos are not the ones who gouge out the eyes and chop of the heads of fallen men in uniform.

So when these ordinary Filipinos get angry and demand justice for these atrocities, they resent it when told not to get angry and not to demand justice because these are bad and divisive reactions that could derail the peace talks with the very ones who committed the atrocities and injustice that has so angered them in the first place.

Ordinary Filipinos feel betrayed when it is their own government, which is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people, that tries to stop them from giving vent to the emotions that make them human, while it gives every concession and every benefit of the doubt to the Muslim rebels who were the ones who took up arms against the government and thus broke the peace.

Ordinary Filipinos did not break the peace, so why should their leader, their president, their commander-in-chief, egg them on not to break the peace when they had been living their lives in peace before the Muslims rebels took up arms to shatter it. When their leader, their president, and the commander-in-chief tells them that, there is no other way for them to feel but that they have been betrayed. They have been sold down the river.

If there is one thing that can come out from the ultimate sacrifice the 44 police heroes gave for their country, it is the reawakening of ordinary Filipinos to the stark reality that faces them in relation to the decades-old Muslim rebellion. And that reality is that the only workable peace that can come out of the Mindanao situation is the kind that is attended by honor and justice. Any peace that is not attended by honor and justice will be fragile and brings no peace at all.

But for the government, for the president, to understand that, he must look at it from the perspective of those who opted to keep the peace, those who did not disturb it. The aspirations of ordinary Filipinos for peace must prevail. Their understanding of it must be the starting point from which government and the president must heretofore launch any future initiative toward the ends of peace.

Ordinary Filipinos must not be made to show sincerity and good faith because they have always held on to these in their hearts. It was not they who broke the peace. It is the Muslim rebels who need to show sincerity and good faith if they want to win back the trust that constitutes the first brick from which any peace may rise. If we must bargain for peace, let us bargain from a position of honor and integrity. Strength alone will not guarantee we don't get shoved around by traitors.

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