Philippine gov’t, MILF aim to sign peace accord before March this year
MANILA: In what could be seen as a breakthrough in the decades-old quest for peace in Mindanao in the southern Philippines, negotiators from the Philippine government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) both affirmed their desire to craft a peace accord within the first quarter of this year.
In his opening statement at the 24th exploratory talks between the government and the MILF which opened Monday in Kuala Lumpur, government chief negotiator Marvic Leonen said that the administration of Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino “wants to see the solution to the Bangsamoro question in motion when it leaves in a little over four years time.”
Leonen, who is also the dean of the College of Law of the University of the Philippines, said that the challenge to both sides is to sign a peace agreement soon enough, so that “it could be implemented and then assessed and then adjusted” before the term of the next president starts. According to Leonen, the “golden opportunity” to craft such an agreement is the first quarter of this year.
“We think that this is possible. Share with us this vision. Within this first quarter, let us attempt to craft an agreement,” Leonen told his MILF counterpart.
Although the MILF did not categorically say that an accord could be crafted within the time-frame cited by Leonen, it nevertheless welcomed the idea.
On the eve of the resumption of the peace negotiations in Kuala Lumpur, the MILF, in an editorial on its website, luwaran.com., said that setting the first quarter of 2012 as the period for the signing of a comprehensive pact with the MILF “is a bold step towards closing the final chapter of what otherwise is a long peace- making process in Mindanao.”
“Imagine, the peace negotiation has been in an off-and-on fashion since 1997 and it is now in its 15th year, spawning four Filipino presidents and nine chief peace negotiators. It is time to arrest the long journey to peace and conclude it right away,” the editorial said.
The editorial said that the signing of a comprehensive compact with the MILF would “settle once and for all the decades-old Moro’ s struggle for self-determination of the raging bloody armed conflict in Mindanao.”
In his statement, Leonen was careful in not mentioning the establishment of a Bangsamoro sub-state, which is what the MILF wants, but only the offer of a “genuine autonomy” to the Bangsamoro people in Mindanao.
He said that the entire Republic of the Philippines would benefit with a region for Bangsamoro people that is not only genuinely autonomous but also one where the principles of good and effective governance are in place.
Leonen said that no autonomy would be genuine unless there is a clear working relationship with the national government in many aspects.
“The national government is relevant. This can be clearly seen even in the document of the MILF, the proposed Revised Comprehensive Compact. It certainly takes prominence in our own proposals,” Leonen said.
He said that any autonomous relationship “should include the equitable sharing of wealth and the generation of revenues to make the autonomous government credible in producing opportunities for its people in an environmentally sustainable manner as well as allow the national government to provide the kind of assistance that should be expected of it.”
Teresita Quintos-deles, President Aquino’s adviser on the peace process, also said that it is about time to put an end to the violent armed conflict in Mindanao.
“I continue to positively hope that the panels will be able to com- plete their task and come up with a framework of political settlement in the soonest possible time,” Deles said in a statement on the eve of the three-day Kuala Lumpur talks which would end tomorrow.
The Mindanao armed conflict had claimed the lives of over 150, 000 since it erupted in 1974, a rebellion started by the Moro National Liberation Front ( MNLF) until a peace agreement was signed on Sept. 2, 1996 during the term of former President Fidel V. Ramos.
But a few months after, the MILF, which opposed the GPH-MNLF peace pact, continued the war which prompted the government to open a new peace negotiation with the breakaway rebel group.
Peace talks between the government and the MILF have been offand-on since 1997, marked by intermittent fighting, including an all-out war that broke out in Central Mindanao in 2000 during the term of former President Joseph Estrada.
Another heavy fighting broke out in August 2008 when the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOAAD) set in Kuala Lumpur was aborted after the Supreme Court ruled it as unconstitutional.