What is peace? What is war? Who is against whom? Who are the
allies? Who are the enemies? Who are the
victims? The oppressors? Who really are behind these never ending conflicts?
What are the repercussions? How can
genuine peace be achieved? Endless questions from endless meanderings of a
peacemaker wannabe like me. I consider myself a peacemaker wannabe, since I am
still trying to learn and from this newbie’s standpoint, the challenge to help
bring about peace to our nation is not at all intimidating. I can see a lot of
promise, notwithstanding the skepticism and hesitations of those around me.
So long as there are people like us who have genuine love
for peace, there will always be hope for a better future. But I do not want
this to be just a sort of an inaugural excitement of a newfound love. I am
hoping for something more tangible to hold on to -- a plan, a concrete
objective maybe, on what to do next. Our search for genuine peace does not
start and definitely should not end in the negotiating tables.
This paper attempts to scrutinize the roads leading to real
peacemaking, the promise that lies beneath the darkened horizon of man’s
harmonious existence, and the repercussions that man’s own procrastination
continues to face. These repercussions
are the ongoing war, oppression, injustices and worldwide economic regression.
War took place because of the inherent desire of man to
expand his territory. Territory means power and so therefore there has to be an
endless search for more. World War I, World War II, civil wars here and there.
All because people refuse to be colonized, all because other countries want
more than what they could get from their own land. Here in the Philippines, semi-feudalism
is not a myth at all. The country’s productive system is basically agrarian and
that its agriculture is dominated by landlords.
While there is not enough if not proper distribution of
wealth, there is no justice. And there is no peace without justice. If peasants
have their own piece of land to till, there is a chance for equitable
distribution of income, a chance for a self-sufficient economy. The country
needs national industrialization and genuine land reform to do away with
foreign and feudal domination.
But given this present structure, we can very well say that
real peace in the Philippines will take a very, very long and lonely course.
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