MILF: Can we trust the gov’t if talks resume?

October 20, 2008

       Amid calls from various sectors including members of the international community  for the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to resume their peace talks, a member of the latter’s negotiating team posed these hard questions: “Can we trust the government again after what it did in Kuala Lumpur when it reneged and did not  sign the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD)? Who will guarantee that the government will honor commitment agreed by the parties if we talk to it again?

       Jun Mantawil, head of the MILF peace panel secretariat, disclosed to Luwaran.com in an interview that the MILF has lost its trust to the government after what it did to the MOA-AD in Malaysia.

       “It’s all the fault of the government why the talks had turned for the worst and in disarray,” he said, citing the lack of unified and coherent position of the government on the peace process.

He explained that it is really difficult to return to the negotiating table even assuming that the MILF so decides, citing the following reasons:

1.The Arroyo administration enjoys zero credibility with the MILF leadership. Trust is the most important component of peace-making, without which the undertaking is doomed;

2.The government has abandoned the MOA-AD, which it said will not be signed in its “present form or in any other form”. The MOA-AD provides the framework mechanism for discussion of the comprehensive compact, which is the political solution to the centuries-old Moro Problem in Mindanao. Unless and until ancestral domain aspect of the Tripoli Agreement of 2001, the third and last aspect, is settled the government and MILF cannot proceed to discuss the comprehensive compact. This is the procedure agreed by the parties including the Malaysian facilitator, and this will be followed;

3.The government disbanded its peace panel, which unwillingly absorbed all the blame for the so-called fiasco in the MOA-AD. However, it is a fact, aside from being part of established procedure of the talks, that in every meeting of the two peace panels their respective credentials to commit and bind their principals were presented and major decisions made by them were cleared first with their principals. The initialing of the MOA-AD in Kuala Lumpur on July 27, 2008 was mentioned in the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Arroyo on July 28, as part of its successes in peace-making. This proves that the President knew every important step or part of the peace talks, contrary to what Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said, even rebuffing his successor to the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), Sec. Hermogenes Esperon;

4.The government has changed its peace policy from talking to armed groups to talking to “communities”. This it “frontloaded with DDR”(dimilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration), which is no less than to force the MILF and other rebel groups to surrender their firearms to the government before negotiation starts; and

5.The government also made it a precondition that talks can only resume if the MILF surrenders its so-called rogue commanders, Ameril Umbra Kato, Abdullah “Bravo” Macapaar, and Aleem Ali Pangalian. This is another imposition, which is a violation of established procedure contained in GRP-MILF Ceasefire Agreement. This Agreement provides that any violation of either of the two parties will be investigated and the findings of such investigation will become the basis of punishment for the erring party by its principal.

The signing of the MOA-AD on August 5, 2008 was aborted after the Philippine Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the petition of some Filipino politicians including North Cotabato vice governor Emmanuel Piñol and Zamboanga City mayor Celso Lobregat, the two most outspoken critics of the GRP-MILF Peace Talks.

Piñol, a Catholic seminarian for one year but quitted for love of the world, accused the MILF of buying airplanes, war vessels, and other war equipment once it gets into power in Mindanao and secede. On the other hand, Lobregat, a descendant of a Spanish soldier married to a local woman, opposed every move to empower the Moros, saying they never owned Mindanao in any time in the past.

After the cancellation of the signing ceremony, three commanders of the MILF, out of extreme frustrations, started to attack military targets in Lanao del Norte and Sarangani. In the case of North Cotabato, government forces started the series of confrontation here by attacking MILF forces 2.5 kilometers away from the highway in the town of Aleosan.