http://www.mindanews.com/mindaviews/2012/12/04/the-voice-why-peace-campaigns-didnt-work/
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The title of this piece is supposed to be “Why Peace Campaigns Didn’t Work; Why It Still Doesn’t and Never Will”.
I read with amusement an article about Sarah Geronimo being tapped by
the Armed Forces as its Ambassadress of
Peace. A wholesome image seems to be the
first criteria. It seems that getting
ambassadors of something has become very
mainstream, along with the causes they espouse.
Let’s see if the observation reflects reality. For this 600-word article, let me just focus
on showbiz personalities. I’m not very
good at answering questions from topics that are out of context.
Right after the signing of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro,
OPAPP brought Epy Quizon, Ebe Dancel and Datu Khomeini to a conflict-affected
area said to be on its way to development.
Of course who could forget KC
Concepcion as National Ambassador Against Hunger earlier. Shortly after UNWFP got her, ACT4PEACE
followed with Robin Padilla, UNICEF with Bamboo (who else?).
Bear with me if I say that at one point I also thought the idea of
getting an ambassador was a novel idea.
In the early 2000s when peace was the
buzzword with the signing of the GRP-MNLF Peace Agreement, part of the
Communication Plan was to tap a Peace Champion (it wasn’t called
Ambassador/dress then). The
UN-Multi-Donor Program wanted a popular face to match the slogans. Somehow it just did not materialize; Aga Muhlach
was the last suggestion but he was already engaged with Jollibee. Culture of Peace was just freshly hammered onto
the 3Ms (military-morofront-media) many felt it was contradictory to the tenets
of peacebuilding to commercialize a worthy cause. The UNMDP morphed into A4P to adapt to the
changing context.
Pacquiao’s name was floated in 2007 for WFP – but some say he, of
rags-to-riches boxing fame, didn’t have the “kagat”
(x-factor) for something fit for royalty.
The rest is history.
What did we gain from celebrities mouthing worthy causes and showing
their well-scrubbed faces in a wailing crowd of fans? After
the shrieking and the autographs and the photo ops and facebook postings, what? All this time that they were around did it
really make a dent on the peace? If it
did not work then, will it work now? If
it did, how?
If the strategy did work, maybe it was on something else but definitely
not peace. Picking up from this cue,
there was no more need for politicians to hire celebrities to mouth their
causes. They did not have to shell out
any amount from their pork barrel for talent fees to the celebrities,
transporting them in fancy cars, billeting them in plush hotels and dealing
with their managers with their individual quirks. All they did was just show their own faces and
tried to look worthy enough!
At one point the perpetuation of the practice was reinforced with a
foreign funded campaign for handwashing.
Note though that with the late SecJess Robredo’s move for good
governance, the handwashing campaign removed the faces of the governors from
their soap and toothpaste. But damage
was already done – the practice remained even without foreign funding, and went beyond soap and toothpaste to tarpaulins and
product endorsements. Talk about
effectivity, the practice of self-worship now
even has a name: EPAL.
I’d like to define EPALism as “a state of mind where you believe that your face is loved by everyone
except others.” With all those faces
screaming for attention in a sea of eyesores, little does the owner know that most of the time, nobody actually ever remembers
him/her afterward and for what reason. Don’t they get it? Right.
It’s a state of mind. Sarah and
the rest need not worry.
Unless that face is removed from the message, campaigns for peace and
all other issues that go with it – hunger, poverty, landgrabbing, logging, right
to self-determination, corruption, mining, GMOs, human rights, respect for
nature, name it – will never work. ##
Cotabato City
30 November 2012
Aveen Acuña-Gulo wrote an editorial column “The Voice” for
the Mindanao Cross from 1991-2006. She likes to challenge stereotypes. MindaVoice is her version for MindaNews. “Don’t worry about my opinions,” she
says. “It won’t make a dent
to the conventional.”
