Two of the Liberal Party senatorial bets who hail from Mindanao Thursday said they see merit in Malacañang’s declaration of the state of calamity in their region, but suggested that the government should make use of the calamity funds not only to hire power barges to temporarily generate electricity but also to fund long-term measures to curb the crisis.

Echoing what Senator Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III said, former Bukidnon Rep. Neric Acosta and Mindanao peace advocate Yasmin Busran-Lao said they respect the decision of the President but called on the people to be vigilant to make sure that the calamity fund will be used solely for its intended purpose.

Both Acosta and Busran-Lao said they agree that the use of power barges, albeit costly and highly pollutant, is the best short-term solution to the power crisis in Mindanao caused by the receding water levels in dams affected by the El Nino phenomenon. But the two of them aired individual proposals to address the crisis in a long-term perspective.

For Acosta, massive reforestation of the areas near watersheds should be funded and mobilized by the government.

“We have to return to ecology to solve this problem because power generation in Mindanao is highly dependent on hydroelectric plants. It may sound so simple but reforestation is so fundamental in reviving the life of the Polangui and Lake Lanao. We cannot seed clouds all our lives,” he told editors and reporters of the Manila Bulletin in a visit last Monday.

For her part, Busran-Lao said the government should also raise public awareness on the connection of environmental degradation to the power outages that forces Mindanaoans to endure at least eight hours of rotating brownouts daily since the onset of the El Niño season.

“The government should also educate the people. They have to understand that they have to play an active part in the prevention of this crisis from recurring. Only by raising their awareness can the government rely on the people to initiate self-help actions to help solve the crisis,” she said.

Acosta and Busran-Lao also shared the same sentiments against the all-out-war policy of former President Joseph Estrada to address the conflict in Mindanao. They are one in saying that war is never an option.

“For us, peace dialogue where we talk more will lessen the need for war. We have to dismantle private armies and inject development in the region so that Mindanao will certainly be the country’s food basket that it should have been,” he said.

Busran-Lao, who has been a social worker before joining the senatorial race, said the government should look into the state of poverty in the region so it will realize the need to speed up development to help solve the conflict.