"On Swords and Plowshares"by CarmeñaLuz Y. Miraflor May 27, 2002 Congressman Orlando A. Fua, Jr. Dear Congressman Fua: I am moving our correspondence to the Siquijor Voices and Opinion section of the website Siquijor.Com. Perhaps you should have sent your reply to it in the first place instead of sending it privately to me since I started this discussion openly through that forum. I am sending this reply to the website as is appropriate to keep this discussion open for everybody to see and perhaps join in. Let me thank you first of all for the courtesy of your reply. It is a healthy sign that bodes well for more open discussions in the future on issues germane to the public interest of the island. For not, let's focus on the issue at hand: the guns! The issue here is the wisdom of your gifting the
barrio captains of Lazi with guns.
By saying that I wish the barrio captains to be hooligans, you
have completely misread the message of my previous letter.
Au contraire, Mr. Congressman, I wish no one, including civilians
in positions of authority, but the police and the military to carry
guns. They go through rigid
training for its use. I
asked you to explain the JUSTIFICATION
for the issuance of arms to the barrio captains.
You have not
satisfactorily answered this question. In saying that by a majority vote, the Association
of Barrio Captains of Lazi where your brother is the mayor, initiated
the move to possess handguns in order to assist them "discharge
their functions”. You might
have asked what drove them to ask for guns and how or when they were
going to use them. Could you have said “no” and have offered them
alternatives such as leadership seminars to enhance their performance as
first level leaders? You
say that a barrio captain is a person of authority and carrying a gun is
a symbol of such authority. There
are other persons of authority such as the town council, the
teachers, the parish priests, the health personnel, etc.
Are they to be armed too? Citing the statistical ratio of gun
ownership to population size does not wash.
Its legality is also not the issue but its
morality vis-à-vis the priority of improving the quality of life of the
people whose per capita income falls below the poverty level. Lazi, and for that matter the whole island, still enjoys relative peace. There is no lawlessness to warrant gun-toting barrio captains. Is a barrio captain now licensed to solve neighborhood disputes using of a gun? How would a gun help? Let's assume that two neighbors are fighting over property borders. Where/when/how does the presence of a gun become useful? How will a gun settle disputes at the barangay level? You have set a precedent for the island, and so is it safe to assume that you are prepared, at least budget wise, to provide the rest of the barrio captains with guns? How many altogether does the island have? 50? 60? Just what is the ideal ratio of gun ownership to the general population since you cited the current ratio (Lazi sampling) is inadequate. If more police officers are required, why not hire more? Who gets to train the barrio captains with regard to responsible use of guns and to whom are they accountable? Deteriorating peace and order situation in the
province is the only valid reason that will justify the issuance of guns
to the barrio captains. For the entire year 2001, the PNP headquarters at Region VII
logged a total of eleven (11) criminal incidents for the entire island
province of Siquijor, and nil, so far, in 2002.
Thank God for this! Even if we were to include any unreported beatings
and other felonies that occur every now and then, we are still far from
needing guns. In sum, peace is with us in the island. It is sheer frivolity,
if not dangerous to issue lethal weapons to the barrio captains to
enhance their authority with its possession when precious little funds
could more prudently be applied on more urgent needs. Let's assume that there is lawlessness. What are these? Burglary? Theft? Vandalism? Rape? Mugging? Drug use and trafficking? Spousal abuse? Would a barrio captain use a gun to prevent these crimes from happening? How? Wouldn't that be tantamount to making him/her police, judge and executioner? How would a barrio captain respond to a burglary in progress a kilometer away? How would he use his gun to solve the problem of drug abuse occurring right there in the social center or elsewhere? We would hope that he is there to stop when the violent crime of rape is perpetrated upon a victim but such a scenario is unlikely. In the instance of any felony, the role of the barrio captain here should be to ferret out the truth, without fear or favor, and to report his findings to appropriate higher authorities. A barrio captain does not need a gun to discharge this function. He was not elected to perform police functions. Mr. Congressman, a barangay captain lives among his neighbors and must discharge his duties impartially and knowledgeably. Instead of empowering him with a gun, he should be empowered with the basic knowledge of civil rights, the law and local ordinances. These can be achieved through seminars. His constituents are not his adversaries. If the protagonists before him are unable to resolve their disputes in his court, then he should advise them to take it up to the next higher authority. It behooves him/her to be able to articulate policies without prejudice. May I suggest a better tool for the barrio captains instead of guns? Arm them with cellphones that they can use in the event of police or medical emergencies. Subsidize the maintenance (batteries) and business-related calls such as calls to the local doctor or the police to rush to the locality of the emergency. This is so simple, much more cost-effective and truly helpful. The issuance of cellphones is genuinely being responsive to the needs of the constituents, especially to those who live in remote areas where there are no vehicles on standby to rush them to the hospital or the police station as needed. Two-way radios would work too and may be less expensive to maintain in the long run. A gun could not function better than cellphones or 2-way radios, unless the motive is to maim or worse, to kill. To glorify it as a symbol of authority is irresponsible and dangerous. The power of a gun is intimidating as opposed to the cellphone or 2-way radio which is a whole lot friendlier and more useful. A cellphone could save lives especially if time factors in life-threatening emergencies. You argue that a gun is a tool equivalent to a mananguete's sanggot or that of a doctor's scalpel. I beg to disagree, Mr. Congressman. Last I heard, the sanggot is a tool used by the mananguete to earn a living. The scalpel is also a tool surgeons use to save lives. The lowly putput, for that matter, is used as firewood for cooking and therefore has a life-sustaining function. I don't see any other purpose for a gun but to shoot at a target, which, God forbid, is a human being, guilty of a crime or not! The plowshare I am talking about is beyond the band-aid solutions to our health care and social problems and livelihood issues on the island, the root of which is poverty. It addresses issues on multi-pointed self-sufficiency through province-wide, small-scale farming, organized for volume so that the people of Siquijor can ride on the export bandwagon. Please refer to my open letter to Dr. Ramon Taroc on the same website. Economic deliverance is the key. Since we do not have the infrastructure to support income-generating industries, it would behoove the administration to look into agri-business alternatives and pour its meager resources therein. Gun distribution does not lead us to a modicum of economic independence. Your roads to market are of no use if we are not producing anything to market! Plowshares in Siquijor figuratively imply a government push for sustainable agricultural development in Siquijor to a level of production that will enable the island folks to earn more cash that in the end will improve the overall quality of their lives. Maybe for once, the island can genuinely contribute to the GNP and earn respect. Cash in people’s pockets will allow them flexibility and enable them to send their children to schools for higher education as well as obtain health care without incurring so much debt. In no way can a gun help our economy. Instead of guns, mini-tractors (I saw one in Dumaguete last December, four times smaller than the one you use in your Tagmanocan fields) could be distributed to the barrios to ease the backbreaking burden of our farmers who have to till the soil manually. These tractors can be transported from acre to acre on a truck and be made accessible to farmers wherever there is a field to till. This is a subsidy that could work and on a linear scale, could eventually pull out the poorest of the poor from the clutches of abject poverty and hunger. Now, let's address the improvements on the island.
The roads. Yes, they are widened and yes they are better than the roads
we used to have decades ago. My
question is why the quality of the road surface is still poor, for all
the money that has been poured into its construction over the years.
The asphalt that presumably holds the surface together is nothing
but a slurry paste of poor quality that erodes with every heavy
rainfall. And please don't
tell me I do not know what I am talking about.
One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the roads
are still substandard with the
exception perhaps of the cemented section in Naherong to the Señora
river. I have talked to people who helped design multi-billion
engineering projects all over the world and who have seen and driven on
the roads you talk about. Quality
sags. Lack of money is not
an excuse. So much money
has been wasted on unending repairs, year in and year out, because the
job was sloppily done to begin with.
Is this by design to justify more road construction and repair
contracts in the next year, and the next? Do you wonder why we do not
celebrate? Wouldn't it have
been a more judicious use of funds if roads were constructed at high
standard at the start and thereby avoid costly repairs every year?
This way, we could save money for other purposes. There
are more urgent needs than GUNS that I can think of. For instance, we
could purchase a dialysis machine for the island, or replace antiquated
medical equipment in our hospitals or firetrucks and ambulances that are
either rusting or no longer roadworthy.
Finally, Mr. Congressman, Max Soliven, publisher of the widely circulated Philippine Star, authored the article about the pork of P50 million allotted to each congressman every year. You say the correct figure is only P35M. That’s a big drop from P50M! It behooves you to pursue this discrepancy. You should complain to Soliven for inaccurate reporting and require him to amend his figures because to leave his report unchallenged puts you in a bad light. And don’t shoot the messenger, Mr. Congressman. To be continued. Yours truly, CarmeñaLuz Yurong Miraflor BTW, allow me a line regarding the word “gifted”. Source: (Webster's New World Dictionary 1978) Gift –
1. n. a natural
ability; talent Source: (The American Heritage Dictionary, 1985) 1. The act, right, or power of giving In legalese, I rest my case.
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