Post-peace talks in a city of peace

HIROSHIMA—This city lives on in the minds of many people as the place in the world where the “atomic age” was born. It was here where, Aug. 6, 1945, a Monday, a nuclear bomb was dropped by a plane piloted by Americans, immediately killing an estimated 80,000 residents.

The horrors of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki are believed to have effectively ended World War II. But the shell of the “Atomic Dome,” previously known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, continues to remind the world not just of the horrors of war but also of the imperative to pursue peace.

Or, as Dr. Akihiko Tanaka, president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), puts it: “Hiroshima is a symbol of peace, peace for everybody.” The city’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui, noted that while “The Bomb” had “changed lives forever,” the survivors had spent the ensuing decades determined to “overcome the past, to focus on rebuilding.”

Maybe this is why this city was chosen as the site of the sixth edition of the Consolidation for Peace for Mindanao (COP6), a gathering held every two years or so for all the parties in the Mindanao conflict, as well as civil society and academic, private-sector and media representatives.

The COP is organized by the REPUSM, or Research and Education for Peace of the Universiti Sains Malaysia and Jica. In its last iteration, in January 2012 in Penang, little did anyone there know how close was the culmination of the then ongoing peace negotiations. So while the Penang gathering was focused on thorny issues that had yet to be threshed out in the talks—the relationship between the proposed Bangsamoro and the existing local governments, for one—the Hiroshima conference is looking forward, with discussions focused on the hairy details of the implementation of the agreement.

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In her keynote speech at the conference’s opening, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita “Ging” Deles thanked the organizers for their “perseverance and vision,” noting how “to have kept faith with the Mindanao peace process for the last eight years has certainly required patience and fidelity—maybe the better word is tenacity?—and I must surmise also a good dose of hope and imagination.”

For when she last addressed the COP, recalled Deles, while the “peace talks were ongoing, the ceasefire was holding well, the peace architecture was in place and robust,” still there was a measure of uncertainty, with “crossed wires and mixed signals (still needing) untangling.”

Indeed, what a difference two years can make! Such that, as Deles declared, “while war brings pain and destruction, it may also lead to new seasons of joy and rebirth…we start our gathering in a season of joy and rebirth because peace is at hand in the Bangsamoro.”

For his part, MILF Chair Murad Ebrahim warned that much still needs to be done as everyone in the Bangsamoro works on the implementation of the agreement. “Without successful implementation [the document] amounts to nothing,” with failure very possibly leading to a renewal of violence, he said.

Then, confronting the harsh reality of the situation, Murad noted that “skill sets useful in combat may no longer be the ones needed at this time,” reminding his followers that one part of the struggle now is “rising above politics” as the MILF transitions to the Bangsamoro, making sure the governance agenda and vision apply to everyone, ally or antagonist, even as the former warriors strive “to honor our past.”

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Part of the visioning process is to begin laying the ground for socioeconomic development in one of the Philippines’ most impoverished regions, where most developmental indicators—health, infrastructure, productivity, communications—fall far below national figures. Poverty incidence in the proposed Bangsamoro is the highest in the country, with the “bottom three” provinces found in the ARMM: Sulu, Maguindanao and Tawi-Tawi.

Dr. Ayesah Abubakar of REPUSM, whose doctoral dissertation had been adopted as the framework of the Bangsamoro Development Plan, said that at the outset, economic planners for the Bangsamoro had focused on two key questions: How to ensure a sustainable and durable peace? How to make peace and development interventions complement each other?

Dr. Saffrullah Dipatuan, chair of the Bangsamoro Development Agency, stressed that the Bangsamoro Development Plan is “not merely a socioeconomic development plan.” Rather, it focuses on transforming the lives of the people living in the area. But Dipatuan pointed out that persistent and serious problems remain, such as the fact that “while more than 50 percent of the power supply in Mindanao comes from resources within ARMM, ARMM has the worst power situation” on the island. Another is the existence of 45 private armed groups in Mindanao which remain threats to the fragile peace situation.

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Indeed, the discussions thus far have highlighted the complexities of the situation, with many persistent problems posing challenges to the leadership of the transition authority (should the Bangsamoro law be passed).

But the Bangsamoro has one asset that is difficult to downplay: support from the national leadership and goodwill from friends around the world. One indication of that is the presence of P-Noy, who will address the conference on the afternoon of the second day. Just as his meeting in Japan with Chair Murad in 2011 jump-started the stalled peace talks, perhaps his taking time to meet with the COP6 participants will ignite the transition process and set it off on the road to full and successful implementation, the culmination of the Bangsamoro struggle and dream.