While both panels are moving toward signing a framework agreement, the MILF said, there are still a lot of contentious issues, after which, there are still the compact and exit agreements to discuss.
By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – The peace panels of both the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Government of the Philippines are set to meet again Oct 2 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in an atmosphere they both described as guarded optimism. They had concluded their last negotiations, the 31st, on the first week of September saying they have “reached substantive gains.”
These gains were enough for Marvic Leonen, chairman of the Philippine peace panel, to hope that by the next meeting, the two parties would “not only move forward but find a quantum leap” in their negotiations. At the closing ceremonies of the 31st talks, Leonen said he was “humbled and admit a certain level of guarded excitement,” as they “make history in measured and certainly painstaking steps.”
From the Philippine government side, the likelihood, hope or prospects of a 2012 signing of a peace agreement between the two parties has been announced in the mainstream media since early this year. President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III’s adviser on the peace process Teresita Deles has been quoted as saying last Sept 4 that the government remains “cautiously optimistic” on the prospects of signing a peace agreement with the MILF this year.
But this hope for signing of a peace agreement this year can be misleading. “There is hope in the talks, but nothing is sure,” said the chairman of the MILF peace panel, Mohagher Iqbal. The peace negotiator issued this statement in reaction to a foreign correspondent’s report that, he said, had misquoted him.
“Never in my entire involvement in the 16-year old peace negotiation that I ever made such a sweeping and conclusive statement that the agreement will be signed,” clarified Iqbal in a statement posted at Luwaran.com this week. The MILF peace panel has long been interested in hammering out a peace agreement, but ,as Iqbal has explained, the remaining issues of just the first of at least three agreements they need to finish and sign are contentious.
In a roundtable discussion with the Moro-Christian Peoples’ Alliance (MCPA) shortly after the MILF peace panel landed in Manila after the 31st talks, Iqbal said that despite the seeming progress in their talks, “negotiation is a process – nothing is agreed until it is agreed – and signed.”
Three layers of agreements to resolve Bangsamoro conflict
If there is an agreement between the GPH and the MILF that may be finished for signing this year, it is just one important chapter, or one big layer to pass through, toward resolving the Bangsamoro conflict in the south.
The MILF says there are three layers of agreements to be hammered out, signed and implemented. Based on the sharing of the MILF peace panel with the MCPA this month, they are still in the first chapter. Though they are already nearing the final, crucial stages in finishing it, it is still fraught with thorny issues, they explained.
The three layers comprise the framework agreement, the comprehensive compact and the exit agreement. The two peace panels are now tackling the framework agreement, which, as the name implies, would guide the next agreements and courses of action to take in resolving the Bangsamoro conflict.
The framework agreement would apparently set the basic principles that would govern the subsequent relations of the GPH and the Bangsamoro. This includes the method or mode of transition, power-sharing, wealth-sharing, and defining the subsidiary clause and territory. Deciding about arms would be the final issue to tackle, Iqbal shared with the MCPA.
He agreed that most likely, there will be a signing of a framework agreement, but what remains for negotiation in this agreement, such as issues of territory, national and international security, are “contentious,” he said.
Add to that, Iqbal said, the issues of power and wealth sharing, which are being handled by two technical working groups of the peace panels, are still not fully settled yet. Iqbal said their panel is proposing the federal form of government as a framework for power sharing, and he thinks it is 80-percent settled already at the working group level.
Despite his 80-percent estimate of what the two panels have tackled already on the issue of power-sharing, Iqbal shared that the two panels have a disagreement on who has primary say in the internal security of what would be the Bangsamoro territory. The GPH wants police power to be still under the national government; the MILF wants internal security to be under the Bangsamoro state. But the Muslim rebel group concedes that “If there are problems we can call on the national government.”
The MILF peace panel also sees as “traps” in future talks the GPH desire “to have direct supervision over provincial governors.” The MILF, they said, wants “defined relationship and not necessarily that the national government has direct supervision.”
As for wealth sharing, Iqbal estimates the two panels have already tackled the half of it. But later on in his sharing with the MCPA, he said they have only begun discussing it. Iqbal said that settling the issue of energy sources and strategic minerals is proving a problem. “The GPH wants control of the strategic minerals; the MILF wants to put strategic minerals under Bangsamoro state control, but the national government can use the minerals if necessary, for a specific period.”
Granting that a framework agreement is signed within 2012, Iqbal explained in another statement that “that does not mean we celebrate because it is liberation time.”
Hurdling the framework agreement paves way to other contentious grounds
Even as the MILF and the GPH envision a signed framework agreement, this year or soon, the transition body it will form would have serious tasks. The MILF peace panel says the transition group would be tasked to “write the basic law on the basis of the framework agreement.” Upon finishing it to the satisfaction and agreement of the GPH and the MILF, the transition body would then “propose amendments to the Constitution.” Iqbal said “the aspiration of the Moro people will not be achieved if it is not legitimized in the (Philippine) Constitution.”
Meanwhile, it would be the transition group who would “coordinate development projects,” Iqbal said.
After the transition, expected to last two years, and if the Constitution has been amended after the transition authority had drafted its basic law, Iqbal said the MILF will be no more. But he added they might form a political party and run for election in the new Bangsamoro state, probably in 2016.
All throughout the crafting and implementation of three layers of peace agreement, Iqbal said the third party monitoring group is to be present.
The MILF also currently has a ceasefire agreement with the GPH.
‘Elephants, spoilers’ of peace process
The MILF peace panel told the MCPA at their roundtable discussion that amidst the temporary cessation of hostilities, “we have our core principles and our arms.”
The Moro rebel group sees “elephants” or big threats to the peace process and peaceful resolution of the Mindanao conflict that they have to fight along the way. The Moro rebel group views, for example, the “elite Moro” as potential hindrance. “They enjoy the status quo,” they explained.
They also view the BIFM/BIFF led by Ameril Omra Kato, a former MILF commander, as trying “to insult the MILF and the GPH” panel when it launched an armed attack against the Philippine government troops last month, as the two panels were about to sit for another negotiation. Iqbal said they have secured the signed agreement of five of the said Moro armed group’s top commanders “not to create trouble while the negotiation is moving forward.”
Iqbal admitted during the opening of their last talks with the GPH in Kuala Lumpur that “there is stiff and protracted battle of ideas raging among Moro groups in Mindanao.” He said one group “bats for radical approach, which is militaristic, and another follows the MILF’s line which pursues for a negotiated political settlement of the conflict in Mindanao.”
Iqbal said at the opening of their last negotiations this month that it can only be put to rest when, “after signing an agreement with the government, the MILF can deliver and the condition of the people will change for the better.”
But as the two panels gear for another talk, civilian populations including Muslim religious leaders cried for justice over the raid of their houses and human rights violations which they said were committed last Sept 22 by elements of Philippine Army Scout Rangers at the village of Ulitan in Ungkaya Pukan, Basilan.
The MILF’s website, luwaran.com reported how civilians complained of how the government soldiers violated their rights. They reported that four houses at least, including the house of the community religious leaders, were raided by the elite troop of the Philippine army, or the scout rangers.
“Without saying anything, the government soldiers just destroyed the doors of the houses and told the residents inside to stay down on the floor,” said the report. “There were no search warrants shown and the government soldiers just search every corner and took with them some belongings.”
The locals reportedly said: “The government soldiers should respect human rights and protect us civilians. But unfortunately they harm us and violated our rights. We thought martial law is over but not in our homeland.” They demanded justice. 
