Remembering Kenney's visit to the MILF camp

(Published in Zamboanga Today on 10 August 2008.)
In February 19 this year, United States Ambassador Kristie Kenney, Zamboanga's La Unica Hija, visited the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in its Camp Darapanan, making a record as the first American ambassador to the Philippines to ever step into the MILF bailiwick.

Kenney then said that it was a "private visit" even as she met with MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim and members of the group's central committee. At that time, no one can say what exactly were the details of the meeting, whether it simply focused on humanitarian assistance or US military presence in Mindanao and no one then really botherd to ask, charmed as we were/are with her smiling face.

However, her presence in Malaysia during the would-be signing caused some eyebrows to lift involuntarily, drawing criticism that centered on the age-old issue of US intervention into Philippine government affairs. With the controversies involved and the recent events that occurred in Zamboanga, Iligan, and other places, some sectors now are asking, what exactly was the US Ambassador's purpose and what exactly were the details behind the talk with MILF leaders re the "peace talks"?

Could that meeting's agenda possibly have included the Memorandum of Agreement on the Ancestral Domain? Could she have had prior "knowledge" to what were to be "discussed" by the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front? We have no way of telling unless she and/or Murad himself would ever divulge.

Murad was then quoted to have said that the US Agency for International Development "is helping us in building this aspect of the peace process." At the 4th Mindanao Media Summit in Davao City, Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Peace Process Secretary Hermogenes Esperon talked about the "humanitarian development assistance" that will be later granted to forty barangays in
Zamboanga City, among over a thousand others in the entire Mindanao. Could Esperon have referred to the USAID as the "funder" of that so-called assistance as well?

We all want peace. We also want our rights to information respected. We also want consultation before change is implemented, especially if the change is a major one, and will alter the lives of many.

We probably should consider what Chuang Tzu once said: "We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away."

And in the meantime, while we do not ask questions nor demand for that right to information that is Constitutionally bequeathed upon each Filipino citizen, a lot more (vital) information may be withheld by those who are in power--and the invisible hand steering the puppet in power. (Frencie L. Carreon)