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 [...]
The work of the Transition Commission for the Bangsamoro region got under way the other day; it is no exaggeration to say that the undertaking is burdened with the high expectations of millions of Filipinos. By the terms of the 2012 Framework Agreement, signed with much fanfare and even more emotion in Malacañang last October, [...]
Everyone has his/her own pursuit—a dream job, an ambition since childhood, things to accomplish or to own. Some discover their interest or goal late in life. In my case, I did not exactly plan to be a peace advocate. I went through a life journey and political socialization that led me to the pursuit of peace.
If the Mindanao peace process ends up a success, it will be seen as the gesture that made all the difference.
There was solemnity then jubilation in Malacañang on that fateful day in October. A framework agreement was signed between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to bid farewell to arms after 40 years of conflict, and to establish a new political entity called “Bangsamoro” which would replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. The occasion was graced by local and foreign dignitaries led by President Aquino, MILF chief Murad Ibrahim and the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Seasoned analysts tell us it is too early to rejoice unduly over the framework peace agreement recently signed between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
It was never a constitutional issue—the lack of any mention of the Constitution in the ill-considered Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD). Charges that the MOA-AD’s manifest unconstitutionality was symbolized in this blinding absence were only political, not legal.
The Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID) lauds the historic framework agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The agreement is the closest we have come so far to initiating lasting peace and development in Mindanao, after more than three decades of armed conflict and 15 years of on-and-off negotiations.
The politicians are at it again. They want, again, to change the Constitution, with the government’s preliminary peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front as excuse. They said the planned establishment of the new autonomous Bangsamoro, which will replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, will need a constitutional amendment.
The so-called Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro uses words to conceal rather than reveal. For instance, it grandly declares: “The relationship of the Central Government with the Bangsamoro Government shall be asymmetric.”
“We will have stories to tell about the last six days. Years from now, when we look back let us hope that we will do so with more pride. Pride, because we would have achieved what we mutually have dreamed of this day and the past few days,” declared lawyer Marvic Leonen, chair of the government panel in the peace talks with the MILF, in his closing statement at the end of the latest round of talks in Kuala Lumpur.
