Entrepreneur of violence

By Artchil B. Fernandez

In this season of break-ups, Sara Duterte finally made open her break with UniTeam partner Bongbong Marcos (BBM). For the first time she publicly opposed and criticized a major policy thrust of BBM by attacking the move of the current administration to engage in peace talks with communist rebels.

In what observers note as another split with the previous administration, BBM decided to explore peace talks with the rebels rather than continue the hardline approach to communist insurgency. The present administration took everyone by surprise including the Dutertes by announcing last week the resumption of peace talks with the rebel movement.  Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity Carlito Galvez Jr. announced that both parties signed a joint communique in Oslo, Norway on Nov. 23, 2023 agreeing to “a principled and peaceful resolution” in ending the armed conflict.

“Cognizant of all serious socioeconomic and environmental issues and the foreign security threats facing the country, the parties recognized the need to unite as a nation in order to urgently address these challenges and resolve the reasons [for] the armed conflict,” Galvez said, reading the text of the communique. BBM told the nation that his administration has taken a “bold, meaningful, and optimistic step” towards a “unified country” in signing the joint agreement.

The latest action of BBM did not sit well with the Dutertes. In the early years of his administration, Du30 flirted briefly with the communist rebels by initiating a peace talk with them and giving four cabinet posts to their recommended persons. But the honeymoon ended bloody with Du30 pursuing an all-out-war against the communist movement. Du30 vowed to end the rebellion by the end term but like his promise on ending the drug problem in six months, the pledge ended in failure. Henceforth, physical extermination of the communist rebels became an obsession of the Dutertes with the vice president currently carrying the torch.

Immediately after the resumption of peace talks with the rebel movement was announced, Sara Duterte bitterly attacked the move. She rebuked BBM for making a Faustian bargain with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). “Mr. President, the government’s statement with the NDFP in Oslo was an agreement with the devil.” The vice president chastised BBM for the devil’s agreement. “History has proven that they are not serious and insincere on the subject of peace. They will use this peace negotiation to betray the government and deceive the people.”  Sara Duterte also vehemently disagreed with BBM’s amnesty grant to rebels (communist and Muslim separatists) made prior to the announcement of peace talk resumption.

Like he father, Sara Duterte believes annihilation is the best pathway to end the communist rebellion. Violence for her is the only route to deal with intractable social problems – from poverty to drug addiction to armed insurgency. Sara Duterte is an entrepreneur of violence. Thinking like the Red Queen, she believes cutting off people’s head is the answer to social malaise and problems. Like a vampire, her thirst for blood is insatiable. Why is she fixated with bloodshed and violence as solutions to societal ills?

One way to understand Sara Duterte’s hardline and bloody approach to armed conflict is through the relational sociology perspective of Charles Tilly. Relational sociology proposes that the transactions between persons and groups determine the onset of violence.  Observers of human violence Tilly (2003) contends can be broadly categorized into three groups – ideas people, behavior people and relational people.

“Idea people stress consciousness as the basis of human action. They generally claim that humans acquire beliefs, concepts, rules, goals, and values from their environments, reshape their own (and each other’s) impulses in conformity with such ideas, and act out their socially acquired ideas” (Tilly 2003). Since ideas people attribute individuals’ engagement in collective violence when they act out their ideas, the elimination of destructive ideas, beliefs, and ideologies is paramount in rooting out violence.

Behavior people have a different optics in explaining collective violence. They “stress the autonomy of motives, impulses, and opportunities. Many point to human evolution as the origin of aggressive action – individual or collective” (Tilly 2003). Behavior people ascribe collective violence to “two factors: socially imposed control over motives and socially created opportunities to express those motives” (Tilly 2003).

Lastly, relational people have a different take on collective violence. “Relation people make transactions among persons and groups far more central than do idea and behavior people. They argue that humans develop their personalities and practices through interchanges with other humans, and that the interchanges themselves always involve a degree of negotiation and creativity” (Tilly 2003).  For relational perspective people are creative, they transact and engage in conversation which determines the amount of collective violence.  “In this view, restraining violence depends less on destroying bad ideas, eliminating opportunities, or suppressing impulses than on transforming relations among persons and groups” (Tilly 2003).

Entrepreneur of violence like Sara Duterte is both an idea and behavior person with her view on armed conflict like the communist rebellion. She attributed the conflict to “ideology” or “behavior” of people thus stressing their physical elimination as the answer to the existence of collective violence. But this approach is a complete failure as evidenced by the continued persistence of armed rebellion for more than half a century.

It is time to consider the relational dimension of the conflict and abandon the assumption that the communist insurgency is rooted on people’s ideas (ideology) or behavior.