Rushing to catch President Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address this afternoon, Philippine government negotiators (according to late Sunday night news dispatches from Kuala Lumpur from both the Associated Press and Reuters) appear to have resuscitated the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Recently retired armed forces chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon, now the presidential adviser on the peace process announced that government negotiator Rodolfo Garcia “signed an agreement with his Moro Islamic Liberation Front counterpart, Mohagher Iqbal, setting the signing early next month of a key accord on ancestral domain.”
Earlier late last Friday, the MILF walked out of the peace talks after Manila reportedly hedged on the timetable in the wake of strongly negative reactions to the planned expansion of the autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao.
Now the news reports are saying the expanded ARMM will include 712 villages, subject to the agreement of residents in a plebiscite.
At the weekend, disturbing reports confirmed that MILF forces “went on a rampage in Cotabato, burning 10 houses, wounding three soldiers and causing scores of people to flee.
The military said the rebels “attacked Aleosan town in Cotabato on Saturday, setting fire to 10 houses and firing at the soldiers who rushed to the scene, wounding three of them. A military spokesman said “sporadic fighting raged for most of the day and soldiers were still in defensive positions yesterday.”
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. warned the MILF yesterday that hostilities could break out if it fails to control its members.“It’s incumbent upon them … to rein in their people…to prevent the outbreak of hostilities,” Teodoro said.
The MILF decision to stage an attack in Cotabato clearly shows they will not hesitate to restart hostilities while the government has been pressured to flip its hand and offer the ancestral land ‘carrot’ to rescue the talks in time for the SONA.
These developments bear close scrutiny as the government may have blinked ahead of the August 11 ARMM election which Manila has also offered to postpone.
The linkage of the postponement at this sensitive point in the government-MILF peace talks is clear.
The matter of expanding the ARMM without amending the organic la,w and the new commitment of an earlier time frame for the plebiscite introduce legal and political issues that government critics are certain to examine in detail in the coming days.
For now, government simply wants to make sure the ‘hope for peace’ component in GMA’s SONA is not disturbed. It will worry about the new issues later.
Popularity: 2% [?]
The MILF represents no one but its leaders. It cannot even control most of those, and fatuously refers to “lost commands” and “bandits” when this lack of control manifests itself in the most inconvenient of ways, such as when they hostage govt negotiators or innocent people.
I don’t see why our democracy should indulge these people at all, who are really holding the entire country hostage and now want the biggest ransom payment of all.
Regarding plebiscites, how many should we hold until we say “Enough!” Virtually no one wants to fall under a restored slave-holding theocratic sultanate with its “sacred inequalities” and brutal methods.
We’ve held two already, and huge majorities of those to be put under some Islamofascist heel have decisively rejected the suggestion. But every ten years or so, after the lesson has been safely forgotten, here we go again with the same faux bit of so-called self-determination.
The Bangsamoro people are far better off under the present dispensation of constitutional democracy in the long run. Enough of this guilt trip laid on us by Constantino, Joma and Nur Misuari.
The Constitution cannot be compromised or gain said, not even for peace!
Let me throw this our there for discussion if I may:
Why dont we want an independent ARMM? Is it because we dont want to part with its resources and want to continue to have the right to exploit it? The Velvet Divorce worked for the Czechs and Slovaks when they realized they couldnt force themselves into a single nation. Why is this option off the table?
ay naku gloria saw saw pa…eksena!!! bumaba ka na kasi sa pwesto mo para walang gulo kung walang gulo di sana wala akong project….