Second of an Occasional Series about the Sabah Issue

By Lolo Bobby M. Reyes of Sorsogon City, Philippines, and West Covina, California

What we need today is to build another kind of army: an army of excellent lawyers, and contingents, divisions and battalions and battalions of supporters in the Philippines and worldwide to put our case through -- hoping that our own government, President Aquino's government, will be emboldened to face the North Borneo (Sabah) Question – Anne de Bretagne

T hus said Anne de Bretagne, who is acting like a Sultanate of Sulu’s adaptation, and an Overseas-Filipino version, of Joan of Arc. She is one of the most-outspoken backers of an Internet movement of “Patriots to Recover Sabah Our Land from Illegal Land Grabbing by Malaysia!,” an online group in the Facebook. Pundits just hope that she is not burned at the proverbial stake by the English for espousing what may be considered as heresy in the British colonial history.

But Anne de Bretagne is right, although she did not fully describe the possible composition of what this writer now dubs a “Sabah Liberation Army (SLA),” for want of a better term. Let me now suggest respectfully to the Sultanate of Sulu and its followers and supporters worldwide on how the Muslims of Mindanao, their backers in Sabah and their fellow Filipino brethren can form the SLA. If formed, it can and must wage a series of “wars” against the “Imperial Kuala Lumpur” (IKL) of Malaysia and what remains of the British Empire.

The SLA must now engage not in a shooting war but a shouting war in a battleground called the “World’s Court of Public Opinion” (WCPO). This is aside of course from a formal case filed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which will seek to reclaim for the Sultanate of Sulu the Sabah territory plus financial damages running to billions of American greenbacks for generations of English and IKL exploitation, and illegal occupation, of the disputed land.

It may be an intense war of wit and wisdom. It will use as ammunitions lots of humor and satire that will match the best insults that the British and Malaysian pundits can dish out. Samples of the British wit and humor are found in this article,

How to Insult with Class:” Lessons from the English  

URL: http://www.mabuhayradio.com/humor-satire/how-to-insult-with-class-lessons-from-the-english

It will involve an immense and global propaganda war, more massive than that waged by the pundits, public-relations experts, wags, humorists and lobbyists of Argentina during its war against the UK over the Falkland Islands in 1982. This conflict might as well be called the “Folklore War,” as it may turn individuals in Sulu, Sabah, Mindanao and the Philippines into folk heroes and folklores will be written about them in their gallant bid to liberate Sabah from colonial powers.

The SLA Must Foment More “Wars” and Five Revolutions in Sulu and Sabah, if Not in the Entire Philippines and Southeast Asia

T he SLA must initiate several revolutions not only in Sulu and Sabah but also in the Philippines and/or Southeast Asia, aside of course from declaring wars against poverty, ignorance and bigotry, among ideal causes and concerns. At least five kinds of upheaval must be launched: a Green Revolution (GR), a Blue Revolution (BR), a Wireless Revolution (WR), a revolutionary Women’s Liberation (WL) and what this writer coined, a ReVOTElution.

The peaceful “revolutions” must be launched to persuade the people of Sabah and the world that an independent State of Sabah and Sulu (SS&S) will mean for the people better socioeconomic lives and better education, so as to eliminate ignorance and bigotry. It will mean more-massive reforestation and agriculture (GR), cleaner blue waters (BR), better communications with the use of state-of-the-art broadband-based equipment such as computers and cell phones (WR). It will also turn a constitutional-monarchy form of government and the economy into activities of the people, for the people and by the people through the use of elections, cooperatives, credit unions and health-maintenance NGOs, among other people-oriented initiatives – through the exercise of the ballot and the use of referenda (ReVOTElution).

The SLA can easily prove that the Muslims of Mindanao have encouraged and continue to encourage their women to seek the highest levels of leadership – as part of a Women’s “Lib” Movement. The fact is that Mindanao has produced more notable-and-accomplished woman leaders than the present system in Malaysia. Please read this article, Moro Women, Second to None, as written by Ms. Amina Rasul. She is the chairwoman of the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy.

URL: http://www.mabuhayradio.com/amina-rasul/moro-women-second-to-none

The SLA Can Put Up the World’s Biggest Army

T he Wikipedia says that “George Macartney wrote in 1773, in the wake of the territorial expansion that followed Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War, of "this vast empire on which the sun never sets, and whose bounds nature has not yet ascertained." [16]

Well, today the British Empire has shrunk to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. On the other hand, Overseas-Filipino workers – Christians, Muslims and Lumads (non-Muslim and non-Christian people of Mindanao) – and Overseas Filipinos number more-than 11-million souls in at least 120 countries. The sun now never sets in the lands of the Filipino Diaspora.

If an overwhelming majority of the OFWs and Overseas Filipinos plus the 90-million more Filipino Christians, Muslims and other people in the Philippines (irrespective of creed, ideology and race) were inspired to join the SLA, it will become the world’s biggest “liberation army.” Easily it will be easy to assemble an army of 20-million or more idealists, advocates, activists, agents provocateurs, pundits, public-relations experts, lobbyists, social workers, educators, environmentalists, marine experts, geeks, journalists, lawyers and what not that can easily overcome the resistance put up by the IKL and the remnants of the British colonial empire.

It may become the biggest scenario Modern World will see in this century, if not in this millennium.

(To be continued . . .)