WORM’S EYEVIEW: Playing cozy: Guingona-NPA entente cordiale?

If they are deadly to legitimate commerce and industry, why are they getting away with kidnapping businessmen, burning offices and equipment, and killing workers?

The local governments, including Gingoog City’s, even let them get away with claiming “exclusive zones” and impose entry permits and fees, setting up checkpoints at will. It was while passing through such checkpoint – within the city of the Guingona administration! – that the night-time encounter with Mayor Ruthie’s convoy took place.

During the press conference, the Guingonas sounded more chastened than outraged by the affront to the mayor’s authority and the city’s sovereignty. No order of pursuit was made, nor a categorical condemnation of the effrontery. There was more talk of “forgiveness” and the need to await the results of an investigation – not by the government but by the raiding force’s revolutionary command! Really! As if such investigations can be trusted! Are the Guingonas ceding territory and authority to them?

Subsequent media reports made the Guingonas’ appear indulgent, even tolerant, towards the insurgents. The ex-vice president pointedly made assurances of his continuing friendship with the movement’s leaders. In wanting to sound reassuring to barbaric insurgents, he seemed unaware that it sounded menacing to the civilized community.

Such handling of violence and insurgency doesn’t augur well for lasting peace in our time. It sounds more like postponing peace, leaving it for the time when the dynasty finally tires of being in power, is through with exploiting it, or moves away beyond the reach of the insurgency. It leaves one musing about unpleasant scenarios.

One wonders, for instance, how Mayor Ruthie Guingona or her son Senator TG would have fared in elections past in that part of Mindanao had they taken an active role in containing the insurgency or in combating terrorism in their backyard. This same question haunts many other places and their respective leaders.

Related question: How did Mayor Ruthie manage to serve three terms unperturbed amid the forces of destabilization surrounding Gingoog City and Caraga? Did she have to play footsie with insurgents… and to what extent so it wouldn’t go beyond the bounds of legality or impropriety?

Finally, and this is one for academic study as well: is there a correlation between dynastic rule, insurgency, and the incidence of injustice as per the record of such communities?

These questions will haunt the administration of Mayor Ruthie’s daughter Marie if she succeeds in maintaining the Guingona Dynasty by getting elected Mayor of Gingoog City on May 13.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Manny Valdehuesa writes from Cagayan de Oro and is the president and national convenor of Gising Barangay Movement Inc.[]