Full Text: Interview With Ateneo De Davao's Fr. Tabora on Duterte

Earlier this month, INQUIRER.net held a series of interviews with leaders of civil society and the academe based in Davao City. One of them is Fr. Joel Tabora, president of the Ateneo de Davao University, who discussed with us the prospects of a Duterte administration.

Below is the full transcript of the interview:

John Nery, INQUIRER.net Editor in Chief: Good afternoon and welcome to our live interview with the very influential president of the Ateneo de Davao University, Fr. Joel Tabora, SJ. Good afternoon Father.

Fr. Tabora: Good afternoon, John. Good to see you here. Since you were in my classroom.

Nery: Back in your presence. Thank you for making time for us on a Sunday afternoon. We have a few questions to ask, and really, most of them have to do with how should we understand the Duterte presidency. Maybe we can start with the very basic question. Duterte is the first ever president from Mindanao. How does the Ateneo de Davao University see this historic achievement?

Fr. Tabora: I guess first of all we have to say that Ateneo de Davao university does not have an official position on this. Official positions in the university are governed by the Board of Trustees, etc. We have a process. But on the other hand, the Ateneo de Davao is very supportive of the newly elected president. Many of its professors and its students are very very active in the campaign for him, and as we have discussed matters after his election, many are very enthusiastic about wanting to be able to help him succeed as our national leader. And the reason I think is simple. Ateneo de Davao is in Mindanao and there are many hopes that Mindanao once had and they've come to rest these hopes in Rodrigo Duterte.

Now, many of theoutside of the fact that many in this university shall support him in his campaign against crime and his campaign against drugs. Many of our people here are very, very committed to the peace process here. We are very disappointed that despite all the efforts that the Aquino administration made in this regard, which engaged many of us very, very deeply here at the Ateneo de Davao, we got very involved in the peace process under President Aquino, but I guess we were all just very disappointed that in the end, because of unfortunate errors that were made, that the, misunderstandings here and there, that the process did not end up in the peace agreement that we all hoped and prayed for.

We really believe that President Duterte can lead the country to a genuine peace agreement with the Muslims. Outside of the fact that he has Muslim blood, we are convinced that he understands the Muslim situation and that he can read, I mean, the political forces within the Muslim groups, better than most leaders, most national leaders in the country. So, we hope that he shall certainly be able to play a big part in bringing peace about. It will be complex and it will probably take a different shape than it took under Aquino because the president is sensitive to the MILF but also to the MNLF and we've heard that he is not close to discussing the possibilities of exploring the Sabah claim. So those are things I think that we hope can also be part of a peace agreement that could be more inclusive than it being more just, than it is presentedin the problems that we have in Sulu and Malaysia and Sabah area.

The other area where I think, very urgently, people are supporting him with great hope is because in this university, most of our students and our professors are very committed to the environment, you know? Our professors who are environmentalists are willing to risk their lives for the environment and they've conducted studies in the environment where they have put their life on the line. That sort of thing. So one of the things that have been very important for our people here is his commitment against large scale mining. Our environmentalists see large scale mining as a huge threat to the environment here, and our water studies have shown that if you have something like the SMI Tampakan Mines allowed here, then it could poison the entire water system of Mindanao because all of these rivers and water bodies are itner connected so we've been passionately anti-mining from this university, but it's never really registered as an environmental issue under the Aquino administration. They've been cool on mining and large scale mining because of the returns that the 1995 Mining Act deprives the Philippines of. But they've never really said large scale mining is an environmental problem. And it is an environmental problem.

Nery: So we're looking at a, you might say, definition of 4Ps that excites Mindanao. There's the peace process, there's the peace and order, there's the planet, and then there's also greater participation by Mindanaoans in national government. I'd like to discuss one or two of these Ps, is there anything else aside from this that has gotten Mindanaoans excited in a Duterte presidency?

FR: Tabora: He's ours. In a sense, he's ours. Because I think that's what, you know, people from Mindanao are saying that we finally have a Mindanaoan president. He's ours, but I think we all know he's not ours in the sense that we don't own him. And we know that we don't, we cannot manipulate this guy. He has his own way, he has his own style, and he uses his own words, but many of Mindanaoans understand him to be ours, therefore, on our side. You know, to an extent, in Mindanao the so called Manila imperialism is felt over many years, we can say over centuries. The ruler from the north has come and has exploited conditions here, you know, when there was a social problem in Central Luzon, they sent the farmers here and they settled here in these lands. There were resettlement campaigns which were started in the American times, but was also carried over under the Filipino officials in the Commonwealth time and later, the resettlement issues which brought migrants from Luzon into Mindanao, displaced the Mindanaoans from their lands and often through loss they did not understand, and that was certainly very true with the Muslim people here in Mindanao, but was also true with the indigenous people in Mindanao.

So, the Mindanaoans feel, finally we have a national leader who can at least mediate this to...