Guns Blazing

am-nes-ty [am-nuh-stee] noun, plural -ties, verb -tied, -ty-ing.

-noun

1. a general pardon for offenses, esp. political offenses, against a government, often granted before any trial or conviction.

2. Law. an act of forgiveness for past offenses, esp. to a class of persons as a whole.

3. a forgetting or overlooking of any past offense.

-verb (used with subject)

4. to grant amnesty to; pardon.

Credits: Dictionary.com

After freeing Italian Red Cross volunteer Eugenio Vagni from six months of captivity, Sunday - the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) is now the government's hot topic.

Defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro announced that they will wage an all-out war against the ASG.

Sen. Richard Gordon then proposed that amnesty be given to the insurgency group.

Giving the ASG, amnesty would be saying that all criminal acts they did prior are not crimes anymore. That all the families they destroyed, lives they have taken and communities they tormented are nothing. And that would be the biggest slap on their faces.

To give amnesty is to overlook past offenses, so what do we tell those that they have offended?

"Hey, the ASG are forgiven. We're sorry if they destroyed your family. But that's all in the past now."

If granting amnesty would ensure perennial peace for the war-torn island of Mindanao, I say why not? But would a group such as the ASG be willing to stop things that they've been doing for the past decade or so? I highly doubt that.

Isurgency in Mindanao has always been one of every Philippine president's headaches. And as administrations change next year, all eyes would be on the next administration on how it will address this particular problem.