I Remember.
When I was tasked by President Fidel V. Ramos to back channel with rebel leaders from the MNLF and MILF, RAM-SFP-YOU and the CPP-NDF-NPA, I personally spoke to Greg Honasan, Nur Misuari and Conrado Balweg in their safe areas.
The message: We've shed precious Filipino blood. Let's stop the fighting and the killing. Get out of the underground and join the mainstream. Let us build our nation together for future generations.
I also managed to talk to local MNLF commanders, CPP-NDF-NPA cadres (both active in the field and incarcerated leaders like Satur Ocampo, Rolly Kintanar and Ric Reyes in Fort Bonifacio), and members of the MILF Executive Council in Cotabato City when my sojourn to Camp Abubakar to talk to Hashim Salamat was scrubbed by rain.
Eventually, peace agreements were forged with the RAM-SFP-YOU and the MNLF although the government's deliverables to the latter have yet to be fully fulfilled. Peace remains a work-in-progress in various parts of the country with the MILF and the CPP-NPA-NDF. It boils down to having good government and being a just society.
We cannot quit. We all have got to work for the future of succeeding generations.
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The 5th of November is a special day in Negros Island. The Negros Revolution, now commemorated and popularly known as Al Cinco de Noviembre or Negros Day, was a political movement that in 1898 created a government in Negros Island in the Philippines, informally ending Spanish control of the island and resulting in a government run by the Negrense natives......Read More
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