Commanders Come and Go but Bohol Peace Drive Continues

After serving one year and ten days as Commander of the 302nd “Achiever” Brigade of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Bohol , and earning his first star in the process, BGen Arthur I. Tabaquero will relinquish his command on Monday, January 29, to Col. Jesse Dellosa. Like his predecessor, Maj. Gen. Juanito Gomez, BGen. Tabaquero has brought Bohol 's peace and order campaign to the class rooms of military schools and the war rooms of military headquarters. BGen. Tabaquero's watch did not have record of major encounters with the local communist rebels in Bohol , but he will leave the command with a feather of Best Brigade on its cap for 2006. That is because gone are the times when a successful campaign is measured by the number of enemy bodies brought to the camp, dead or alive. Now success is measured by the number of enemies who have embraced normal life voluntarily, the number of firearms an enemy surrenders to the camp as a sign that he has abandoned his armed struggle.

More than that today, success is also measured by the percentage of the poor whose life has become comfortable, the number of visitors and tourists who have come to the locality, and the amount of investments that investors have poured to the locality. The military is no longer for defense of the country from external aggression. When government asked it to get involved in internal security, it also made it a development institution. Like Gov. Erico B. Aumentado who built on the accomplishments of his predecessors, BGen Tabaquero has continued the programs of Gen. Gomez to work closely with the local government units and become one of the pillars of Team Bohol. Under BGen Tabaquero's watch, discipline continued to be the hallmark of the AFP's presence in Bohol . This is what won for 302nd Brigade the respect of LGU officials and the Boholanos. This and the sincere and honest call for genuine peace are what won for 302nd Brigade the return of many armed partisans to mainstream society. We hope Col. Dellosa, a ranger by training and orientation, will not only continue the fine traditions that BGen Tabaquero and his predecessors have left Bohol but will also enhance them because it is in doing so that he, too, as his predecessors, will earn his first star.

Commanders come and go but the search for peace should remain genuine. Proof that the peace our political leaders and the military is pursuing in Bohol is not anymore the annihilation of the enemy but their reintegration into society, another engine of the economy and the nemesis of poverty was inaugurated yesterday at Brgy. Matin-ao, Carmen. We are referring to the palm oil mill of the Philippine Agriculture Land Development and Mill, Inc. (PALM Inc) that DENR Secretary Angelo Reyes inaugurated yesterday.

The mill has a capacity of 30 metric tons of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) per hour – enough to serve 5,000 hectares of oil palm plantation. The mill is designed to allow for extension of the capacity to 60 tons FFB per hour. That is if the plantation can be expanded to 10,000 hectares. When oil palm planting was still being planned for Bohol , there was opposition from all sides. More so when the company announced that a mill would be constructed. The reasons cited were mostly the ill effects to the environment but none nor very little on its economic impact to our poor.

Today, more than five years after, the ill effects to the environment have yet to be experienced. More likely we will never experience them. I used to live in a place that first planted oil palm in the country. They are now on their 40th year but I have yet to hear of environmental disaster caused by the planting of oil palm. On the contrary the farmer cooperators have long jumped out of the poverty pit. We will write about this some more in the future.