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 to have overcome the legendary Heartbreak Hill, a famous ascent not just because it is steep but because it lies at the last quarter of the route just when the runners’ energies begin to flag and they “hit the wall.” Given recent events, the metaphor is particularly worrisome.
The Framework Agreement was signed on Oct. 15, 2012, amid hallelujahs from the UN Secretary General and the diplomatic community about a “landmark achievement” and “historical leap” toward peace. The document, however, was tricky. It gave the impression of having sealed the peace when in fact it merely provides a bare framework for future agreements—and not on side issues, but on the indispensable core of any peace accord. They were disingenuously called mere “annexes,” but look at what they cover: “power sharing,” “wealth sharing,” and “transitional arrangements.”
Lawyer Estelito Mendoza correctly pointed this out in a letter to the editor (Inquirer, 3/26/13). We have been “erroneously [led to believe] that when the framework agreement was signed in celebratory ceremonies in Malacañang, the annexes had already been completed …,” Mendoza wrote. “It seems rather unfair that an aggressive campaign for its support, led by no less than [the President], is being undertaken before the people are informed of the complete agreement. The validity and wisdom of the agreement cannot be judged on the basis of incomplete information ….”
Mendoza also asked: What if we disapprove the changes required for “accommodating and entrenching in the Constitution the agreements of the Parties?” For instance, the negotiators now say that an MILF-led Bangsamoro Transition Authority would take over from the constitutionally mandated Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. And yet we were earlier assured that the Framework Agreement entailed no charter change!
The government and MILF negotiators twice convened in March and April to iron out the annexes on “power-sharing, wealth-sharing and normalization,” but failed to conclude a single annex. (Although the Oct. 15 document mentioned only three annexes, a fourth annex on “transitional arrangements and modalities” was signed in February.)
Last week, they signed only a joint development program called the Sajahatra Bangsamoro that will extend livelihood subsidies to Bangsamoro communities. It smacks of tokenism at best and of cheap inducements at worst, a roundabout way to channel taxpayer-funded goodies to appease the rebels.
From another direction, Secretary Teresita Quintos Deles has been quick to say that “the voices of all Bangsamoro stakeholders” were heard. And yet after the shootout in Sabah last February, we learned the painful way that one stakeholder—the elephant in the room—had been deliberately shut out. How could the peace talks have been brokered by Malaysia when the Kiram heirs were claiming part of its avowed territory as part of their family estate?
Chief MILF negotiator Mohager Iqbal insists that Sabah is not an issue in the peace negotiations and “should not affect the ongoing talks with the MILF.” Perhaps it should not, but the fact is it does. It will be naïve for us to believe that Malaysia is motivated by altruism in brokering the peace deal and will not hold the peace talks hostage to the Sabah negotiations.
“As we near the top of Heartbreak Hill, more intrigues will come our way. The process is difficult. But remember, what has brought us here is trust,” Mr. Aquino has said. Today, it is precisely trust that the MILF doubts. There is “something wrong… a very serious question of credibility,” said Maulana Alonto, a member of the MILF panel, after the government stalled on the wealth-sharing annex.
Read in this context, the recent WikiLeak of a 2010 US diplomatic cable is most telling. MILF peace negotiator Michael Mastura was quoted to have said that the peace process was “too complicated for [then] Senator Aquino to understand.” Given the current deadlock on wealth-sharing, the cable’s note of caution is equally ominous: “We have no basis to believe that the MILF would prove more capable than its predecessors of governing well.”
Have we brought out the champagne too soon?