DAVAO CITY, Philippines – The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will study the peace roadmap offered by the Duterte administration to continue the peace process.
“The central committee of the MILF will meet next week to go over what the Duterte government is proposing for the peace process,” MILF vice chair for political affairs Ghazali Jaafar said.
Under the roadmap, there will be no more negotiating panels in the peace process between the government and the MILF but an “implementing panel” representing the membership of the two peace panels.
Jaafar said Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza offered the peace roadmap that President Duterte wanted to pursue with various groups in Mindanao.
“And in that roadmap, there would no longer be any negotiating panel because the negotiation phase has been done with and government wants it to be named implementing panel because the peace process, as they said, is now in the implementing phase,” Jaafar said.
Jaafar explained Dureza made the MILF understand that the implementation would pertain to all the agreements, including the 1996 peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) the MILF signed in 2014.
He pointed out the shift in the names of the panels formed part of the peace roadmap that the Duterte administration would also want to pursue with other groups, including the MNLF and the lumads.
Aside from Jaafar, MILF chair Al Haj Murad and other senior members of the group’s central committee were also in the closed-door meeting with Dureza on Thursday at the MILF headquarters in Camp Darapanan, Maguindanao.
Jaafar, however, stressed the issue of creating the implementing panels would still be discussed with the members of the MILF central committee.
Jaafar added Dureza did not present any document that would represent the peace roadmap of the Duterte government.
“No document on the roadmap yet but it is easy to remember the points that were discussed in that meeting with Dureza,” he said.
Jaafar said Dureza made them also understand that there would be a reorganization of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC).
The BTC was created on Dec. 17, 2013 under Executive Order 120, tasked to come up with a draft on the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which would serve as the basis of a new Bangsamoro political entity, in accordance with the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro.
The BTC should have been dissolved upon the enactment of the BBL but it did not take place as Congress had to adjourn before the May 9 elections.
Jaafar said Dureza explained to them that the BTC would be composed of eight members coming from the MILF while the rest will be from the MNLF and the lumads.
Jaafar said Dureza explained to them the BTC’s role in relation to the BBL.
The BBL, Jaafar said, can still be enacted by Congress.
Dureza, meanwhile, welcomed as “positive” the convergence of the MILF and the MNLF in putting closure to the Mindanao conflict.
The MILF and the largest of three MNLF factions, the one led by former Cotabato City mayor Muslimin Sema, had twice forged in recent months a deal binding both forces to find a common solution to the now 45-year Moro rebellion.
Sema’s group has more than 20 “revolutionary states” scattered across the country’s south and in all five component provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
“There is an apparent convergence and inclusivity now in each other’s peace-building initiatives. This is what we want, a peace process involving all stakeholders,” Dureza said.
Dureza said he finds beneficial to the peace process the convergence of the MILF and the MNLF-Sema group in a common formula for a lasting peace in the south.
The MILF and the MNLF-Sema group had earlier said their initiatives are meant to synchronize each other’s concepts on how to best address the Mindanao Moro issue.
Through the intercession of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the MNLF and Malacañang signed on Sept. 2, 1996 a final peace deal, after 20 years of negotiations.
The MNLF was a solidly monolithic organization then, led by its founding chairman, Nur Misuari.
The group got fragmented in 2000 when a bloc of Misuari’s lieutenants, among them Sema and many other MNLF leaders in the ARMM’s five provinces, broke away due to loss of confidence in his leadership. – With John Unson