Mindanao groups launch ‘Peace Talks Watch’

OZAMIZ CITY—Mindanao civil society groups have strengthened their monitoring of the peace process by launching the ‘Peace Talks Watch.’

On Monday, as the peace negotiating panels of the government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) convened for their 22nd exploratory talks, monitoring billboards will be set up in strategic locations in Iligan, Cotabato and Davao cities.

Abdul Malik Cleofe of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC) said the billboards will be marked “365 Days Countdown to Peace” and would contain major updates from the negotiations.

The one-year timeframe is in keeping with the optimistic estimate of both panels within which they can hammer a political settlement, said Cleofe.

Juanito Enriquez, managing director of the Civil Society Organizations Forum for Peace (CSOFP), said the peace talks watch is one way of formally reminding the government and MILF negotiators that the people are interested in seeing a definite conclusion to negotiations.

“Let us see the end of talks and the beginning of implementing the measures necessary to empower the Moro people and reverse historical injustice,” stressed Enriquez.

“We are highly confident in the capacity of both panels to see the process through these aims,” he added.

A day before last April’s talks, civil society groups from key cities of Mindanao held a peace caravan as a symbolic send-off of the panels.

The talks on June 27 to 28 in Kuala Lumpur is the fourth under the Aquino administration—three formal meetings every two months since February, and one informal meeting on January.

On Monday, the government panel is slated to present its counterproposal to the draft peace pact submitted to it by the MILF last February.

A working draft of a comprehensive compact is expected to be drawn from both proposals.

In Cagayan de Oro on Thursday, chief government negotiator Marvic Leonen said the solution to the Bangsamoro question must “remain principled, yet pragmatic.”

“We will reach out to the MILF without conceding, or surrendering our ideals. We hope to leapfrog the process, and enter into an agreement soon,” Leonen said.

Leonen held a briefing on the peace process to 85 Army battalion commanders in Mindanao at Camp Evangelista where they gathered to discuss about the internal peace and security plan of the Armed Forces.

“Let us move forward by seeing the larger picture (of the Bangsamoro problem), moving together in small practical steps to find reasonable solutions to longstanding problems,” he said.

“There is one aspiration that within the year, we will try to put everything in place to give primacy to the peace process,” he added.