Resuming the Peace Process with the CPP-NPA-NDF

Peace with the CPP-NPA-NDF (CNN) is a government initiative. 

Therefore, it may only be effectively resumed primarily through the auspices of the GPH. 

A formal invite to return to the table must be extended and accompanied by a means basic that presents a path toward an honorable truce. 

In this initial truce, the RPH calls on the GPH and the CNN to honorably observe a cessation of hostilities as a requisite condition to a mutually pre-approved terms of a durable truce.

(Raising the white flag of truce in a conflict that divides only our nation is not a sign of weakness nor is it a mark of dishonor. It is a sign of humility and a mark of realization and truth. No one side shall be raising it alone, we shall as one Republic together raise it, so that after it - our Flag may soon follow.)

Terms of a durable truce will include powers-under-truce intended to further without prejudice the mutual goal of establishing and re-establishing effective mechanisms for peace and stability on the ground.

(Within the context of this framework truce we shall equitably re-apply the spirit and letter of JASIG and CARHRIHL that they may, while preserving their intrinsic value and integrity as separate documents, gain perspective accessible to the minds and hearts of our common citizenry.)

And these conditional powers be therefrom further defined and achieved in and by degrees of proven trust. 

Proven trust gathered under truce shall in time merit the endowment of mutual grants - granted by both sides permanently to the center of the table - and protected by policy - as beneficial to the facilitation of the process whole.

This is how I foresee the talks renewed.

The unifying vision of the RPH in this particular aspect of the one whole peace process must be especially clear. In this, the MILF process stands to teach us some vital lessons learned. 

Social justice and the political process must be salient points in the minds of conveners from the CNN side.

Memory and remembrance must therefore be at the forefront on the GPH side. That the GPH may express knowledge of ourselves as RPH enough to dispel the overthrowing vision that has guided and misguided for so long a time this armed insurrection we are attempting to quell - by reconciling all to the unifying vision of our one Republic whole. 

That the Filipino spirit may have a home to rest within - peace for our nation, prosperity for our people.
---<--@

The Nine Common Human Needs: Security of Person and Property

Uncertainty is a root cause of fear in Man. This fear before our Exile was a Fear of Certainty. Both of these fears preserve in them the original intention that Man is to be - as the Angels, a social creature - a loving and faithful keeper to each other.

The former, which is a fear of the unknown - is manifest in each of us as an abiding and mortal fear of our impending temporal death, and exists as a consequence of our Exile.

The latter, which is the Fear - of the God Who Is - the Ultimate Truth - is a holy, loving, and awe-filled reverence that abides in the hearts of those who seek after Him - whom He calls unto Himself - in order to more perfectly love Him, and serve Him, and know Him.

The latter inspires us to freely strive for Peace and Human Community. The former bends the will and the spirit towards an understanding of the latter. The former must lead to the latter and the latter must enlighten the former. That the burden of our civilization may be light. One leads to safety, the other to freedom.

For the LORD, our God and Creator, is a God of Community - the LORD of hosts. He dwelleth in Unity and this Unity is Peace.

One of the main reasons that spur our human civilization forward is our need of a common relief from this fear of the uncertain. For it is painful.

The human spirit itself is driven by a universal thirst for a more perfect understanding of that Fear, which leads to Wisdom, and that Wisdom which is an understanding of the Truth - Truth that to our souls is Peace.

Aspects of this interior seeking universal to all Men and to all Women remain common to all our Sacred Remembrances; a spirituality of Peace therefore, remain as a common teaching in each our most cherished and honorable religious traditions as well - particularly, within our three Abrahamic faith traditions.

And so, in spite of the long shadow of War, we as a people remain yearning for Peace. It is more certain to us than War - in ways we often fail to readily understand.

AT THE VERY LEAST, in the sense that we are all equal partakers of this yearning (for Certainty) in our Nation (and in our world), we hold to an expectation as citizens that each of us may - in common - enjoy, security of person and property -

THAT dignity of each individual human life and the safety of its promise - from conception to natural death, along with each our respective right to private ownership - as a natural right and as a public trust - be duly preserved by the Philippine State.

The value of Sacred Life being already well defined, to further expound on the right of private property, I shall take from a teaching in Catholic Morality (excerpted from the book, Catholic Morality by Fr. John Laux, M.A.)

4. Duties Concerning Material Goods

a) The Right of Private Property

1. Ownership defined. - Not only spiritual goods, but material goods also have been placed at the disposal of man by God. But whilst the goods of the soul and the mind are accessible to all and do not diminish, no matter how many partake of them, a material good can, of its very nature, belong undivided only to one person, and the oftener it is divided, the smaller becomes the portion of those who use it. The right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of any material good for ourselves, to the exclusion of others, is called the right of private property or individual ownership.

2. Private ownership rests on the divine law and, taking man as they are, is necessary for the individual and for society -

a) the Seventh Commandment forbids theft as a violation of the rights of others. If private property were theft, as the French Communist Proudhon calls it, theft would not be a violation of the rights of our neighbor, but the right of the State. But God does not forbid theft as a violation of the right of the State, but of the right of our neighbor individually. In the New Testament parables such as those of the sower, the vineyard, and the fig tree pre-suppose the right of private property.

(As regards to plunder of the public coffers, it is the individual tax payers' right of representation, direct as well as indirect, in the official affairs of the State that is violated.)

b) Private ownership is founded on the nature and condition of man; it is a natural right. Nature imposes upon man the duty of preserving his life, and hence it also gives him the right to exclusive ownership in those things necessary for the preservation of his life.

c) The individual has natural duties to provide for the material needs of his family and the education of his children. But he can not fulfill these duties without the right of accumulating and retaining a variety of these goods. If all men were perfect Christians, then the difficulty would be minimized. But we must take men as they are.

d) Without the right to private ownership there would be no incentive to work and consequently no progress in the arts and sciences.

e) God is the true Lord and Master of all things by the right of creation. But man also, the image of God, can mold and modify things at his pleasure. The fruits of his labor bear the stamp of his personality; and thus becomes their true lord in a limited sense, as God is their absolute lord in an unlimited sense.

f) Under a system of common ownership (Communism) the distribution of labor and of the rewards of labor would destroy individual liberty and make all citizens slaves of the State. Under such circumstances, peace and order are inconceivable.

(As regards the peace process with the NDFP, it is not condemnation of each side our Republic whole must seek but a re-calibration of interests leading towards the beginnings of a common ground vision pursuant and compatible with the reality of the Philippine State, a transformation of the nature of the conflict, and ultimately a reversal of the mindless tides of prejudices and cessation of the cycles of violence that have consumed this Nation for several generations now.

In short, we must together make this Republic of ours work - and, in an imperfect world, labor for the common good of all. Upon our Peace - one, whole, and complete - much depends.)

...

4. Whether we possess much or little, we must always remember that we are only the stewards of what we possess, not the absolute masters, and that we must one day give an account of our stewardship. For as God never gives up His dominion over the gifts of life, so He never relinquishes His right over the gift of material goods.

The fruit of this vision 
in the reality of the Nation is -
An institutionalized, civilian Policing, 
Public Safety, and National Security Service.
---<--@


The Nine Common Human Needs

The Question of Cain

Let us meditate a little more
on this war within the Filipino soul -

The absurdity of this war is
that it constantly propagates itself among our people,
multiplying the reasons why we should abandon our Nationhood,
when all the while, it is precisely this Nationhood
that can redeem us.

It feeds on the life of our beloved peoples,
overpowering the human spirit - from weak to strong.
It lies to our faces - that it means to do us good
and then proceeds to devour our children,
sparing none.

In war, the only winners
are those who learn its lesson.

War is the tutor.

Peace is the test.

And to pass this test
brings success.
---<--@

The Land of Nod

As a Nation, let us be reminded that to serve the power of our arms is to be slowly but surely crushed by its burden. If we continue the course, we might find a day when we realize we can not eat our weaponry nor this continued violence against our own Nationhood allow for our people the best and the brightest means to satiate our common human needs.

BUT we have in the past ceded the nature of this internal conflict to the power of arms, and sought to further invite this war among ourselves like it were a friend -

and so for decades, we fought over this war. 

That this so-called "friend" may by its power vanquish our hatred of others, our fear of their "otherness". (Is there such a thing as "otherness" in a soul that is one? We only mirror our own hate.)

And so we became enemies to ourselves. We fought until hatred and despair, themselves offspring to war, became another reason to fight. (Fighting for the sake of fighting alone is not a lineage that leads anywhere.)

We fought until attitudes of murder crept into our own self regard for the Filipino soul, and became as Cain. In ourselves we have come to also behold the person of the Adversary - in our brother, our fellow siblings to the one Nationhood.

If we are not careful, we will be like Cain - a fugitive to his own heart, restless for Justice yet unable to return to its source.

There is a certain kind of fear that dwells in the land of Nod, it is a fear of others - a fear that is not a tension of the respect - due to God and to our fellow human beings - that leads us in time to discover how to surpass its own limits - it is an inward thing, imploding and shrinking the soul of a person.

It is a fear that prevents common respect and human community and dwells in a restless land devoid of faith and trust, in God and Country.

Our Nation is proof against that fear, and restores Justice where Justice needs to be restored. Not the justice of Nod, but the Justice original to our Eden. (After all, did not the LORD give us our clothes? And more so, in the Gospels is found the greatest remedy to this restless fear - for the Seal of Christ dispels it - for Charity covereth a multitude of sins.)

We exist - in this particular regard - to do both the brothers Justice, Abel by Remembrance, Cain by the Love that lives within the compassion of our peoples - exemplified by our famed hospitality, our native trustfulness and willingness to give welcome to the person of the stranger; and the power to make of them - strangers to us no more.

The question of Cain is a question of Liberty.

Cain is not free to find it. So we do not expect answers from Nod. The answer is - in us - as citizens and keepers to our common humanity. And if we seek to do both the brothers Justice, then each of us must choose to remember - and then, to renounce the War that brought to the first generation of our Exile so much woe.

And a woe - let us recall to memory, terrible upon terrible, that we have had to live with ever since.

Nod is in the Unknown Earth. It exists in places where the Goodwill of our Peace - as one Nation and as one Family of Nations - have not yet taken firm root upon the soil of our world.

If we continue to allow this war in the soul of the Filipino to remain, we shall exile ourselves like Cain, and nothing that is lasting shall ever be built upon this world by our labors of Country for our Nation. And the fruits it shall bear shall always never be enough to nourish the goodness and the life of our people.

Nor shall we be any more good to other Nations than our chosen weakness - our fellow Nations who are kindred to us in this world - in the Truth - to whom we do rely and who also look to us for their reliance.

We shall as a people proceed upon the Unknown Earth as Cain, restless for Justice and thirsting for a true sense of belonging - yet fearful for our own Reliance - to God and Country; wanting to return yet unable to return - set apart from our Peace by our own lack of choice.

The question of Cain is a question of Liberty.

The Decalogue made it clear that murder is a transgression in the eyes of God - in beholding the Divine Law; this is universally recognized in the ethical codes possessed by the great lineages of the Children of Mankind and a common prescript reflected by the Law of the Nations.

In the time of Cain, the killing of Abel was murder - as an act of War. It was not Cain who did murder his brother. But it was he who opened the door of his heart to it. And "it" - the Advent of War - caused him to kill his brother - by his own hands.

At the onset of the Nations of the Children, the LORD introduced to the Nations through Moses and the faith of His Nation Israel, a common prohibition on murder. So in our days, murder is clearly and heavily sanctioned.

Because murder too was exiled to Nod - with Cain. And as we are - as Nations - called to gather all the Children of Mankind - in the way of our return to Peace - neither War nor its many offspring which are lies, hatred, pestilence, famine, murder and genocide - must have a place in our life and labors.

Yet where war is, there shall the shadow of its offspring linger. Is this war among ourselves our "friend"?

That we should mouth its lies,
partake of its ancient and relentless hatred for our common humanity,
clothe ourselves with its violence, and allow its adversarial spirit
to feed on the life and labors of our human communities -
only so that it may proceed to devour our children
ruin the order and purpose of our generations
and profane the peace of our communities.

The nature of this war among ourselves is such that it is an evil to us - only inasmuch - as we are - in ourselves lacking in the good. We are sufficient for the Peace we must profess. We should never be afraid of our own Reliance - to God and in each other.

War is, of course, a greater beast that the one we must together in this Nation confront.

But if we come together in this Nation of ours - in Peace, as a Nation - let us also understand, we are with other Nations together capable of staying the beast - as one Family we are able to build up a world that is better for Peace, through Love for common humanity and living Remembrance.

Nevermore shall the stirring in our spirits stir for War - but for the many hopes the past generations shall to us entrust, when we make our peace with their memory.

But first, we must end this War within ourselves by a free and human choice. (War chose us - it seeks for us to open the door of our hearts to it, we do not have to - there is really only one choice we have as a Nation - renounce it. Let Peace be our policy. Let us also wonder and be grateful at the foresight of the architects of our 1987 Constitution - are they not like us?)

I believe there are many opportunities these days to exercise citizenship with fidelity. And to be able to understand and to make this choice for Peace freely is a prime opportunity to do so.

Is it not good practice - to find the right questions - why our Nation must end this war, and let go of all the wrong reasons - how, and how may one proceed from choice - to civic efficiency - to human exercise?
---<--@

Practical Application -

Found here is the provenance where from the CARHRIHL is in spirit derived. The JASIG sought to draw the line upon the sand whereby we may together reverse the nature of the conflict.

That this line may only be realistically held under the flag of a robust and honorable truce is where the present difficulty lies. We shall overcome this difficulty or we shall be overcome by it.

Let us be for the overcoming. 

Amen, let us begin. May God continue to bless and aid our efforts - mabuhay!

What War Expects?

If you are familiar with the theme of this blog, you must likewise know how happy I am for this moment. 

Alhamdulillah, Alleluia, Praise God - May all who share in this moment bless the LORD. And may we also bless each other for everything we have achieved so far and appreciate the dignity of the common work of Peace we have together set out to complete. 

Let us gain a fresh perspective on the way ahead from this triumphant vantage - and soldier on. 

Let us persevere in our Peace Process. The successes we achieve thought it I know will most certainly help to feed our families and our generations tomorrow. The Filipino shall be the better off for it.

Let us be more eager then - for more. For the reality of this success must have quickened something in us. Let us also find a way to get the NDFP (CPP-NPA-NDF) back to the peace table. 

Let us as one Nation together - do now what War does not expect. Let us do this in our souls - in behalf of everything we suffered. Much depend on it.

---<--@

Our right of ascent is Peace. Our way of ascent is Goodwill. And proceeds from the prevailing strength and clarity of our Peace. Peace in ourselves. Goodwill to others like ourselves

We renounce war not by policy. But by a free and human choice.

It is in our Constitution that we renounce war as an instrument of the State. It is contingent upon this Nation therefore, to enshrine Peace in our civic spirit and thought - being the Peace of who we are - as a free and sovereign people - and a Nation upon the earth.

The way of Amity between Nations, also in our Constitution, naturally proceeds from this, our Turning Away from War.

The War within the Filipino soul can not defend us.

It can neither feed our children, clothe our human dignity, embrace our human potential, nor may it hope to satiate our profound need for a strong and concentrated sense of national identity as Filipinos - one that reaches into the very soul of the Citizenship that lives in ourselves, a sense of the Truth, much more to us in substance - than just the word itself.