Elusive peace

I was shocked to hear about the bombing incident near a bistro in Cagayan de Oro’s upscale Rosario Arcade because I was around the same area to attend a co-operative conference two days earlier.

In a previous column, I wrote a glowing account of my arrival in Misamis Oriental’s Laguindingan International Airport last Wednesday because the airport took my breath away. It is surrounded by the beauty of Macalajar Bay on the one side and the greenery of the hilly area leading to the national thoroughfare on the other.

Because the Laguindingan airport is near the shoreline, airline passengers are afforded a totally different experience when their plane descends to the runway. The beautiful Macalajar Bay lends such a positive, almost healing sense that I thought the spanking new airport built at a cost of P7.8 billion would be a new chapter for Mindanao, its proverbial door to peace, economic recovery and real development.

I joined some 200 agricultural cooperative leaders in the one-day Sustainable Agriculture and Cooperative Marketing Forum upon the invitation of the Co-operative Development Authority. Actually, Elias Baquero, chairman of Cebu NewsCoop, was the invitee, but since he was not available he passed on the invitation to me.

Under the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) Northern Mindanao, Coop leaders gathered in Limketkai Center’s Caprice Restaurant, the same venue chosen by chest physicians all over the country for their national convention which was abruptly cut short because of the bombing incident.

On Thursday (July 25), the day I and CDA administrator Mercedes Castillo left, convention delegates started arriving in the hotel where we both stayed. Medical professionals and company representatives were milling in the lobby while waiting to be registered. Doctors mingled with young medical representatives and I overheard them converse animatedly.  They were apparently looking forward to a fruitful convention that affords some free time for sightseeing and shopping.

I didn’t sense anything off when we left Thursday so the bloody incident really shocked me. I wonder if the perpetrators really intended to bomb the nightclub that day, or was it a random decision? I get goosebumps wondering whether the culprits had in fact reconnoitered the agricultural co-ops forum but decided against it for one reason or another.

Whatever it is, the scene in the hotel lobby on the eve of the medical convention will always remind me that life is fleeting.  Here today, gone tomorrow.

The process of investigation has suffered a setback because the scene of the crime was washed a few hours after the bombing. There is speculation that workers of the nightclub immediately cleaned up the area not knowing that it has to be preserved for investigation. I think this is believable because normally people do not like to look at places where bloody deaths occurred.  The implication of this scenario points to the absence of the police in the area when the bombing happened, never mind that Cagayan de Oro has been the scene of recent bombings.  I recall that in 2012, delegates to the National Co-operative Summit were shocked by a bombing incident that hit the hotels where they were billeted.

Just when we think that peace and development have come to Cagayan de Oro in particular and Mindanao in general, this bloody incident happened.

The national government has funnelled billions of pesos for Mindanao, not just for infrastructure projects but also in efforts to forge peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The peace agreement has been sealed with the consensus on the Annex on Revenue Generation and Wealth Sharing.

Clearly, the work should not end there because what happened last week proves that peace remains elusive.