Breakaway specter

The latest Social Weather Stations survey says 83 percent of the country, or about four out of five Filipinos, are hopeful that the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front will eventually arrive at a peace agreement.

The optimism is striking in that, in the same survey, overall public satisfaction with the Aquino administration’s handling of the issue of reconciliation with Muslim rebels is merely “moderate.” Also, the survey was conducted before news of President Aquino’s unprecedented secret meeting with MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim in Tokyo earlier this month broke out. In that meeting, the President and Murad reportedly agreed to “fast-track” the peace process.

There are two things Malacañang can take away from this survey.

One, there is no better time to work for peace than today, when the public is primed for it more than at any other time in recent memory. Any final document the government and the MILF comes up with—assuming it meets all constitutional and legal obligations and is the product of reasonable, transparent, good-faith negotiations between the two parties—would be an easier sell to a people fed up with the never-ending strife in Mindanao.

And two, precisely because much of the country is now invested in the peace process, its hopes once more rekindled after the last ill-conceived attempt at ending the war in the south ended in disaster, it is imperative for the government to ensure that, this time, it gets everything right. When the earlier Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) the MILF had forged with the previous Arroyo administration was stymied first by popular outrage, then by a Supreme Court ruling, the outcome was swift and bloody: hundreds killed and thousands more displaced as incensed MILF members laid waste to parts of Mindanao. This cannot happen again.

Mr. Aquino’s openness to exploring novel ways of resolving the impasse, as seen from his unorthodox gesture of meeting the MILF head; the Muslim group’s own encouraging announcement of dropping its demand for independence and settling instead for a Bangsamoro “substate” that would still be an indisputable part of the Philippines; and, not the least, if the SWS survey is any gauge, the public’s readiness to support another shot at the peace process—these elements should all conspire to make this moment the best opportunity there is in a long while to hammer out a just and lasting peace accord for Mindanao.

But, as the government and MILF panels prepare to resume formal peace talks on Aug. 22, among the myriad complex questions they have to resolve is a most immediate and consequential one: what to do with the MILF’s renegade elements. Already, Ameril Umbra Kato, now head of the breakaway Bangsamoro Islamic Liberation Fighters and main suspect in the rampage that followed the non-implementation of the MOA-AD, has denounced Murad’s Tokyo meeting with Mr. Aquino as an act of “surrender.” The MILF has responded by declaring Kato and his group a “lost command,” presumably meaning it is relinquishing any control or influence over the armed faction, and will no longer answer for its actions.

If that is all the MILF is prepared to do with regard to its rogue spawn, it is a most disappointing gesture, even a cagey one. Kato’s 200-some fighters represent a direct threat to the viability of any peace agreement the government and the MILF may arrive at. No genuine armistice can take root if, like a hydra-headed beast, the MILF’s formal acquiescence only hatches new armed groups that will continue to wreak havoc on the region, each one more ruthless than the last, and each one subverting the MILF’s claimed moral standing to speak on behalf of the Muslim populace. That’s why, just ahead of the peace talks, the MILF’s washing of hands over its mutinous faction does not in any way qualify as a confidence-building measure.

Meanwhile, presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda is doing the government side a disservice by downplaying Kato’s group as “not big”—the same assurance, incidentally, the military has repeatedly given about the Abu Sayyaf. The point is not its size, but whether it should be there at all, poised to sabotage the process at every step. This early, the government panel must insist on firm, unequivocal and verifiable assurances from its Muslim counterparts that it is prepared to do whatever is necessary to rein in its most dangerous elements—or the negotiations risk ending up back at square one.