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J. de Venecia: Peace, the Greatest Need of Our Time
Written by Hon. Jose de Venecia, Jr., Chairman, CDI-Asia Pacific
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Address to the Global Peace Festival
Cagayan De Oro City, Mindanao, Philippines
September 21, 2008
Brothers and sisters in peace: I wish you joy at this Peace Festival in our beloved city of Cagayan de Oro, and may the peace you sow raise a harvest of righteousness!
I come here today to join you—our brother Filipinos—in our agonizing search for peace in Mindanao. No goal is greater or is more desirable or important in our generation. For there can be no alternative to peace. This fratricidal war in Mindanao—brother Filipinos killing each other, has already exacted heavy costs. And our nation cannot afford to lose any more in blood and treasure. But this peace cannot be won through the force of arms; nor can it be imposed through violence or the subjugation of our ethnic and religious minority.
In Mindanao, War Is Not an Option
War, we know only too well, can only produce tragic consequences. The costs of a war policy the professional politicians have pursued are tragic and staggering.
From 1969—when the fighting between Muslim separatists and the armed forces began under the Marcos Administration—to 1996—the year the Ramos Government signed a peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front—the Mindanao-Sulu violence cost 120,000 lives.
An average of 18 people are killed every day in this island, and 20 percent of the fatalities were civilians. In that same period the Armed Forces spent about P73 billion pesos—or an average of 40 percent of its annual budget in relation to the conflict. And still, the Mindanao war dragged on.
But if war is not an option, neither is peace that does violence to the Philippine Constitution just to avoid a renewal of the conflict. This peace you and I seek we must win in the most peaceable way—through honest negotiations by both sides, grounded in the belief that what is best for the nation is best for its people, regardless of religion and culture.
My brothers and sisters in peace: It is this peace that in my public life I have labored to help create. I join you today to help change the face of Mindanao, to help transform its heart, to banish hate and discrimination, and to bring about an era of peace and solidarity between Christians and Muslims and Lumads (indigenous people of the southern Philippines).
I join you today to help change the face of Mindanao, to help transform its heart, to banish hate and discrimination, and to bring about an era of peace and solidarity between Christians and Muslims and Lumads (indigenous people of the southern Philippines).
My generation has been trapped in a cycle of setbacks and progress in Mindanao. Peace has been hard to attain. But war and its brutalities is much harder to bear. We pass on this hard lesson to the young. And as I gaze out across this vast throng, I see many youthful faces and I’m reassured. The youths are here for a purpose. I must tell you: you are here because the Filipino nation needs heroes for peace.
You are here because you love your country and people, and you are now ready to take the lead in the search for peace. You know that peace is not a choice. It is the imperative of your generation. This is a time for audacious action. And the road to take is not to dismember the republic, nor to create a separate Muslim enclave within the Philippine state.
The key to peace is with you and not with the professional politicians. For the mistakes these politicians made were paid for with blood in the forgotten battlefields of Mindanao. Today the youth must seize the initiative to revive the peace process and to move for an immediate resumption of peace negotiations. And this initial step we must make meaningful and significant by supporting it with two major initiatives:
- An interfaith dialogue that enlists the participation of civil society, the ulamas, and the leaders of our youth to build good will and bridges of understanding between religions and cultures;
- A massive economic rebuilding of Mindanao. I propose to call this the P100-billion "Mini-Marshall Plan."
Ambitious as it may seem, it is attainable. But first we must take a collective stand and move for it. For this is the best way. Mindanao can be lifted from grinding poverty, hunger, illiteracy and social injustice and reverse decades of official neglect. Poverty breeds insurgency and extremism. A military solution was implemented to root out extremism but not its immediate cause. But we can attack poverty in Mindanao one way—through a powerful economic action plan to transform the face of Mindanao and reverse decades of official neglect.
This plan must be made to work where it counts most: to build more irrigation systems, hospitals, markets and halal-based meat processing plants; to modernize Mindanao's agriculture and fisheries; to promote its tourism industry; to expand Mindanao's universities all over Mindanao; and to propel small entrepreneurship by creating Grameen-type microfinance cooperatives.
This plan will require decisive action by the Philippine Congress. And it should involve mobilization of funds from the Word Bank, Japan, China, the United States, Australia and New Zealand and the European Union.
I am no longer a young man. But I believe in the dreams of the Filipino youth. I share in their fierce idealism about what they can do for this country. I am confident that this is a dream we can achieve for Mindanao—through a combination of economic mobilization, civic and economic action, the resumption of the peace process and a ceasefire with the MILF. Such a powerful affirmative action program has succeeded for Muslims elsewhere—in Malaysia, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.
As in those countries, Mindanao’s economic resurgence and prosperity can become the final solution to the Muslim insurgency. This has been a driving force in my public life. And I shall devote the remaining years I have to do what is necessary to help end the gridlock in our government, to help bring about the integration of our Christian and Muslim societies, and to prevent any more bloodshed—that tragic waste of our young in battlefields of war not of their own making. This is what you and I can do.
Understanding Between the Great Civilizations
My brothers and sisters in peace: In Mindanao and elsewhere in our global community, nothing can be truer than the maxim that there can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. And there can be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions.
The Interfaith Dialogues, which we had the privilege to present in 2003 to the United Nations General Assembly as a Philippine Resolution, have been unanimously approved by the UN. In September 2006, the Philippines and the UN organized under our initiative, the first Interfaith Summit of 13 nations at the UN in New York, attended by Presidents and Prime Ministers. Now the Universal Peace Federation and His Majesty, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Saudi Arabia, separately, but of the same mind, have been holding successful Interfaith Dialogues in various parts of the world.
Understanding among the great civilizations has become the only basis for global peace that will endure. From these Interfaith Dialogues, we should expect no miracles—except those that result from open hearts, the willingness to see the other side’s viewpoint, and minimize differences. But beneath these differences, we’re one human family under God.
And the peace we fight for in Mindanao is a peace for God’s children—for we are one human family in Mindanao, one in the Philippines, one in Asia, and one human family in the world living under the canopy of heaven.
The peace we fight for in Mindanao is a peace for God’s children—for we are one human family in Mindanao, one in the Philippines, one in Asia, and one human family in the world living under the canopy of heaven.
In sum, peace in our time is a community of sharing that we must seek in collaboration. And the peace we seek is not just the armed peace between wars but the peace of “every man living under his vine and his fig tree.”
We are God’s children belonging to “one human family under God.” May the Holy Spirit come upon our midst and manifest His power—so that in everything we do, we shall have victory!