False choice

False choice | Daily Tribune

There’s a place I visited years ago on a media coverage. It was a barangay in Lupon, Davao Oriental that, for years, was known more for the fear that permeated the place than its potential.

The only “program” the youth knew was the one offered by armed rebels: a life of conflict, of seeing their own government as the enemy. Then, something changed. A concrete road was built. Not a fancy highway, just a reliable path that connected farmers to the market and let students get to school without a two-hour muddy trek. This was a Barangay Development Program (BDP) project.

Now, an organization called Kabataan Partylist is calling to defund this very program. They say it’s about fighting corruption. Come on, they’re blaming the firetruck for the fire. Having been on the ground covering remote areas in Southern Mindanao for real stories for more than a decade, I can tell the BDP isn’t the problem — it’s the solution to a much deeper sickness.

The story of that barangay is the story of the BDP. It’s not a military fund or some abstract idea. It’s a water system that means a mother doesn’t have to walk miles for a clean drink for her child. It’s a small health station that means a fever doesn’t have to become a tragedy. These projects were chosen by the community itself, in consultation with their local leaders and national agencies.

To call this “bogus” is to insult the dignity of the people who finally have a say in their own future.

Kabataan Partylist claims this is “surrender under militarization.” I wish they could have seen the face of the farmer I met, let’s call him Mang Luis. He told me in Visayan, “Before, we were afraid. The only people with power here carried guns. Now, the power is on this road, in the livelihoods. This isn’t surrender; this is the first time we’ve felt free in years.”

That’s the real, tangible development. So, what is the “bogus” kind?

I couldn’t agree more with Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr, NTF-ELCAC Secretariat Executive Director, who said the bogus development is the one that sells a dangerous lie to our idealistic youth, a deception that leaves a trail of broken families.

We must listen to the anguished cries of groups like Hands Off Our Children and the League of Parents of the Philippines. These are not political actors, but mothers and fathers grieving children who were secretly recruited, given a cause, and then lost forever to the mountains.

Their children’s dreams of becoming engineers, teachers, and doctors were traded for an ideology that offered them a gun and an early grave. This is the ultimate cost of the poisonous grooming that convinces a bright student that burning a bus is a more powerful statement than building a library.

Kabataan Partylist also attempts to manipulate Filipinos into taking sides. They demand that the money currently allocated to rural roads be redirected to urban universities instead. This is a false choice. The BDP builds the very school buildings in remote areas that make higher education even possible. How can a student in a conflict zone dream of college if there’s no decent high school to attend, nor a road to get there?

Whether we like it or not, BDP builds futures, while the rebels’ deception destroys them. Let us heed the plea of every parent who wants their child to come home alive and achieve their dreams in peace.

Let us not be fooled by the politics of anger. See the pain in the eyes of the parents who have lost everything.

It pays to choose the harder and more honorable path of building. Our energy is needed not to tear things down, but to build the roads, the schools, and the future that every Filipino family deserves.