COMMENTARY: MOA-AD documents another injustice against the Bangsamoro – MILF

By Taher G. Solaiman

Cotabato City/February 25, 2009 -- Asserting that the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain Aspect of the Tripoli Agreement on Peace of 2001 (MOA-AD), having been already initialed by the Parties to the peace negotiations, is a “done deal” and a “living document,” Jun Mantawil, head of the secretariat of the Peace Panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), claimed that the MOA-AD “documents another injustice being committed against the Bangsamoro people.”

In his paper titled “A Brief on the GRP-MILF Peace Talks as Option for Peace in Mindanao,” that he read before the participants of the two-day Mindanao Civil Society Organizations Peace Summit held in the El Manuel Convention Hall, this city, on February 18-19, 2009, Mantawil also said that “the unilateral action and heavy use of force by the government against so-called rogue MILF commanders (Kato & Bravo) had rendered the peace mechanisms ineffective and inutile to the destructions of lives and properties with a semblance of humanitarian tragedy where about 695,225 internally displaced persons (IDPs) were uprooted from their place of abodes particularly in Moro communities in Mindanao.”

In retrospect, the MOA-AD was initialed on July 27, 2008 by Sec. Rodolfo C. Garcia, chair of the GRP Peace Negotiating Panel and Sec. Hermogenes Esperon for the Philippine government; Mohagher Iqbal, chair of the MILF Peace Negotiating Panel, for the MILF, and Datuk Othman bin Abd’ Razak, chief Malaysian facilitator, for the
Malaysian government, as witness. The initialing was done in the presence of Sec. Norberto Gonzalez, chief national security adviser of the Philippine Government and Dato’ Ahmad Zamzamin bin Hashim, chief of the Prime Minister Research Department of Malaysia.

However, the signing ceremony that was set on August 5, 2009 in Putrajaya, Malaysia, was aborted by the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) issued by the Supreme Court of the Philippines.

As regards the possible resumption of the peace negotiations, Mantawil reiterated the five-point declaration that the MILF put forward for the peace talks to resume, namely:

1) There must be an international guarantee composed of states or group of states that both government and MILF to honor and comply with agreement forged by the parties;
2) The status of the MOA-AD must be settled first, because to the MILF it is "done deal,” but to the government, it is "no deal" and "unconstitutional;"
3) The International Monitoring Team (IMT) must lead the investigation of all violations of the ceasefire from July 1, 2008 to date;
4) The government to stop its offensive in Mindanao even against so-called rogue commanders of the MILF, and
5) Malaysia will stay as facilitator of the peace talks.

Besides, the MILF raised some questions that it wants answered first lest it fears the repeat of what happened in Malaysia on August 5, 2008 when the government was restrained by the Supreme Court from signing the MOA-AD.

These questions are:

1) Does President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo possess the political will now to
sign and honor its agreement and not buckle down to save her neck instead of taking risk, as any good and decisive leader dares do, to solve a centuries-old Moro Problem in Mindanao?
2) Does the peace process become the “national agenda” of the entire
government and not just the executive branch of government? Are other branches of government especially the Lower House and the Senate on board?
3) Has Arroyo already reined in anti-MOA-AD personalities to treat the peace
process as a real problem-solving exercise and not a counter-insurgency
tool?
4) Did she reach out to justices of the Supreme Court regarding her peace
agenda in Mindanao?
5) And lastly, is the government serious and not just to dribble the talks until
June 2010, the end of the term of President Arroyo, and in the interlude, pursues its mendicancy policy using the rehabilitation of Mindanao as the reason?

On his part, Atty. Zainudin Malang, executive director of the Center for Bangsamoro Law and Policy, who spoke on “Civil Society’s Role in Internationalizing the Resolution of the Mindanao Conflict,” noted that there is a need to internationalize the conflict resolution in Mindanao because “domestic institutions have either failed or refused to resolve the conflict” by refusing “to address serious legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro” and that “State institutions (executive, judiciary, legislature) and non-state institutions (media, business, national civil society, church) have expressed opposition to the MOA-AD.”

Malang also cited other reasons such as “the international community (foreign governments, international government and NGO institutions, international civil society, international media) have been instrumental, even indispensable, in resolving conflicts around the globe” such as “Northern Ireland, Southern Sudan, Aceh,” among others.

He, nonetheless, clarified that “although involvements by international community will not necessarily result in the resolution of a conflict, its participation increases the chances of just and sustainable peace” as he further stressed that “the international community has a right and duty to protect people where states or governments fail to do so.”

“However, just because it is a duty does not necessarily mean that the international community will step in or continue to involve themselves in resolving the conflict if there is no impetus or pressure for them to do so. And domestic society and institutions will oppose internationalization,” Malang said.

While Malang admitted that some aspects of the conflict are already internationalized, he lamented that “the level of internationalization does not match the magnitude of the crisis.”

He, then, emphasized that the international community “will not take the conflict seriously unless they see or hear stakeholders here take it seriously” and “they will not be pro-active in advocating for a just resolution of the conflict unless they see or hear stakeholders here being similarly, if not more, pro-active.”

Atty. Mary Ann Arnado, the secretary-general of the Mindanao People’s Caucus, also shared her thoughts on the “Role of Civil Society in Pushing for the Peace Process Forward.”

Arnado stressed the importance of reaching out to the “unconvinced” among the communities and such groups as the academe, media, business, civil society, church and local government units, as regards the MOA-AD.

At the end of the peace summit, the participating nongovernment organizations and people’s organizations were unanimous in their call for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to stop its military operations in and immediately pull out its troops from the civilian communities; the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) to cause the safe return and rehabilitation of the internally displaced persons (IDP’s) to their respective places of origin; the international non-government organizations (INGO’s) and the international community to help urge the GRP and the MILF to return to the negotiating table, and continue the peace talks from where they stopped before the aborted signing of the MOA-AD.