MikeLigalig.com

By Rey Anthony Chiu
Philippine Information Agency

With Bohol trailblazing the way to peaceful resolution of insurgency, just how did the province that has been scraping the country’s poverty bedrock do it?

Governor Erico Aumentado says it is through a comprehensive poverty reduction program, the economic component of the government’s campaign which tandems with the military solution.

“Candidly, the military can not solve this problem alone,” the governor said at the National Defense College of the Philippines symposium weeks ago.

The Bohol response is by poverty reduction for peace and development, Aumentado, who formerly heads the country’s Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines shared.

But, like other poorer provinces, Bohol put up an innovative Local Peace Reduction Action Plan which tracks the areas needing immediate government intercession and which allowed the province to focus on the 41 insurgency influenced barangays in 20 towns within the Communist Party of the Philippines New Peoples Army’s four guerilla fronts, local development workers added.

Bohol leaders have understood from the start, Aumentado admits in a speech delivered last August 10 in Manila.

“Conflicts borne from poverty, deprivation of basic goods and services, lack of employment and livelihood opportunities, non participation, injustice and human rights violations have to be addressed both by the local government units and the civil society,” he shared.

Employing strategies of alliance building, convergence, community organizing, capability building and reinvigorating the bayanihan spirit, the poverty reduction program exceeded our expectations, he admitted.

Led by the church and the military authorities who had the culture for peace, the local government channeled development funds into conflict-affected areas in far-flung barangays to regain government presence.

About P100M has been taken from the development funds to leverage for foreign funding from 2002 to present, the governor said.

Wanting to re-view the military’s special operations teams (SOT), Bohol modified it by putting up its civilian community organizers and immersing them in areas to immediately facilitate the needs of the communities, a Bohol Poverty Reduction Management Office community organizer said.

The goal was to regain trust and confidence in government. The new SOT was even supplemented by the monthly civic-action activities, quick response teams, fact finding missions, local peace forums, local monitoring board for the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) and the implementation of the rebel-returnee program even in the suspension of the national amnesty program, a Team Bohol team member shared in an interview.

Team Bohol is the newly formed group pushing the local peace initiatives to the forefronts, while using the innovations.

With the program, from 305 influenced barangays, now we only have 24, and from 284 armed NPA members in 2001, it is down to 42 in 2005, while the insurgents moved their base to Leyte effectively reducing the rebels’ fighting force to just one island command.   

Now languishing in the highly improved peaceful environment, the economy also followed, he said.

From within the Club 20 of the poorest provinces, Bohol soared to number 52 among 81 provinces and merited the second most improved province in terms of poverty reduction, the governor claimed.

Moreover, he added that the innovations attracted the convergence of global funders while becoming the delight of tourists and visitors.

Most of all, we have given our constituents what they always longed for, a peaceful environment ripe for economic growth and development, the Bohol governor concluded.


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