A signal from the South

A signal from the South

President of the Philippines Fidel Ramos has said that the Moslem guerrilla group under the leadership of Abu Sayyaf is responsible for the rampage in the southern town of Ipil on Tuesday in which the police chief and the military commander were killed, and banks were looted and the town's commercial center was burned.

If Ramos's statement is true, the lunch-time raid is not just banditry as other authorities in Manila had tried to portray it, but an effort by Abu Sayyaf's organization, the most feared guerrilla group, to draw the world's attention to the fact that it is still capable of doing something brutal to derail the peace efforts between the Ramos administration and the Moro National Liberation Front, the largest and oldest rebel group.

The delegations of the Philippine government and the Front have agreed to meet again in Jakarta in June to follow up on their peace talks here last September. Last year the two parties, who met under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference with Indonesia as both mediator and host, managed to eliminate many hurdles, but left the problem of the formation of a provisional government for the autonomous territory of the Filipino Moslems, known as Moro, for further meetings. Abu Sayyaf had not only refused to join the peace process, but appeared to want the peace train halted altogether.

We believe the ruthless attack on Ipil, the town of 150,000 people, was not only meant to derail the peace train, but also to urge the world to check to see whether the authorities in Manila have done adequate enough to improve the lot of the five million Moslems who live on Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan islands. Reports coming from the country have said "no".

Reports also say that although the economic development has been quite successful in the south, Moslems have shared very little of the national pie.

Ramos is, of course, not alone in the blame. The Moros have been suffering since the administration of president Ferdinand Marcos. Under his successor, Corazon Aquino, the Moros were not much happier because they complained that the what had been given to them by Marcos was taken back by Aquino.

Now President Ramos, who claims that he understands the Moslems better and has a lot of friends in the South, should be doing more to redress the imbalance and injustice in this particular part of the Philippines, rather than just taking part in the peace process.

With the ugly reality still there -- for God knows how much longer -- the guerrillas might not stop at Ipil. Especially when the army seems shamefully impotent, without the capability of anticipating such a brutal guerrilla assault.