Viewpoint
Yesterday’s ‘apparatchiks’
By Juan L. MercadoContrast is a compelling tutor. Compare the track records of talks for peace by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Communist Party of the Philippines. Both were intractable insurgencies.
Contrast is a compelling tutor. Compare the track records of talks for peace by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Communist Party of the Philippines. Both were intractable insurgencies.
Both President Aquino and chief peace negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer had unwittingly chosen a scary metaphor. They likened the peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to the Boston Marathon, and a foreign peace advocate, pursuing the imagery, said we were “just so close to the finish line.” The negotiations were said [...]
We can only hope that the gains achieved in the Mindanao peace process will not be wasted by the revival of the Sultanate of Sulu’s claim to Sabah.
A news story reported that on Feb. 27, 2013, one of the four annexes, particularly the Annex on Transitional Arrangements and Modalities, to the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro, has been agreed upon. I perhaps erroneously assumed that when the framework agreement was signed in celebratory ceremonies in Malacañang, the annexes had already been completed although their publication had been withheld. Apparently, that is not the case.
Baileng Mantawil heads a nongovernment organization called Bangsamoro Women Action for Development Initiatives or Bwadi. She is also, she says, a “child of war.”
I don’t know what it is exactly that Sultan Jamalul Kiram III hopes to accomplish by telling his followers to “stay put” in Lahad Datu in Sabah to “reclaim their ancestral homeland.”
If the Mindanao peace process ends up a success, it will be seen as the gesture that made all the difference.
The year is starting well for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government. Here in Kapatagan, Lanao del Sur and other parts of Maguindanao, the MILF has started to police its own ranks. It is now after persons involved in illegal activities like gambling, robbery and holdups in these areas.
Talks resumed between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last week to try to break the impasse over the establishment of an autonomous Bangsamoro homeland in Mindanao.
THE MORO Islamic Liberation Front has agreed in helping the government look for the remaining Maguindanao massacre suspects who are still at large. The offer was made by Ghadzali Jaafar, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s vice chair for political affairs. This shows that the MILF is sincere and willing to help the government. It [...]
The youngest appointee to the Supreme Court in over 80 years, Marvic Leonen brings to the tribunal not just youth but also experience—forged from his stint in the academe and in landmark cases in behalf of indigenous communities (he is himself a native Cordilleran), human rights victims and the environment.
