The BBL is dead, let us bury it

The peace process is struggling hard to remain breathing, but the BBL is dead. After what the MILF did to our Fallen Forty-Four, no senator or any congressman would have the gall to push for the legislative process to continue. At this point, events have given the Filipino people enough reason to lose trust and confidence in the MILF. The great majority of our people are now convinced that the MILF cannot be trusted. And all our confidence-building measures are now completely shattered. We should abandon the Bangsa Moro as the right path in our search for peace.

While our ultimate objective is peace, the government side has done all the giving, and the MILF all the taking. The government has practically surrendered our national sovereignty by the many substantial concessions granted the MILF. The MILF has been virtually granted a belligerent status, in the context of international law. We have spent a lot of money, and used a lot of efforts to craft an agreement that can serve as the ultimate solution to the century-old socio-economic and political gaps in Mindanao. And then the MILF murdered the best of our police troopers.

By choosing to snub the Senate hearings, the top guys in the MILF hierarchy are practically insulting us. They do not honor the noble objectives of the peace process.

They are using negotiations as a strategy to divert the attention of the nation, while they continue to strengthen their ranks, to conduct initiatives to build up their organization. Government is naive enough not to discern that the MILF is not really for peace. They continue to get concessions and favors while they never stop killing our people. This is the best example of negotiating in bad faith.

And yet, some of our leaders still want to expedite action and approve the BBL, as if our lives depend on it. If the BBL is finally buried, it is really the MILF's loss more than ours. While we want peace and we renounce war as an instrument of our national policy, it is our duty to defend our country when its dignity is being ridiculed, insulted, and frowned upon.

The MILF has added a grave insult to us on top of the many lives lost and injuries it has inflicted on our country and people.

The last straw that broke the camel's back, so to say, was when, on the second day of the Senate investigation, the MILF representative declared, reading from a script that the MILF remains a revolutionay movement until and unless the BBL is passed into law. That was a grave insult and a threat. Senator F Marcos quickly asked "Does it mean that right now the MILF is still waging war against the government?" And so, what peace are we talking about?

We have done our part, we have paid our dues. But the MILF keeps on violating the rules. It is time to stand as one nation and tell our enemies that the peace process is not worth dying for. Like the Fallen 44, the BBL is now dead. Let us bury it.