Advocates remain hopeful of Mindanao peace process

As President Benigno Aquino III delivers his second State of the Nation Address (Sona) today (Monday), the clock has ticked away 28 days from the one-year period that government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) negotiators said would take them to hammer out a peace formula to end the decades-old Moro rebellion.

In his inaugural address last year, Mr. Aquino underscored the goal of bringing “to a final closure the armed conflict in Mindanao.”

After a year of high expectations, a hopeful atmosphere has prevailed although there is buildup of anxiety whether there can be significant leaps in the process in record time.

Negotiations recently hit a snag when the government failed on a promise to respond to the MILF’s proposed peace pact which has been on the table since February.

The submission of its counterproposal could have facilitated the formulation of a working draft of the peace pact and signaled the start of “real, hard negotiations.”

It is “a big disappointment,” said 20 civil society organizations who have launched a formal countdown on June 27, in time for the panels’ meeting, to keep track of their commitment.

Peace negotiations with Moro rebels have been at the ‘concluding phase’ since mid-2009; the remaining work for negotiators is crafting a comprehensive compact. Amid the setback, the advocates remain hopeful of the peace process.

Mary Ann Arnado, secretary-general of the nongovernment group Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC), said the continued presence of lawyer Marvic Leonen and political scientist Miriam Coronel-Ferrer in the government peace panel is reason enough to be optimistic of a turnaround in the pace of negotiations.

Prior to their respective stints as government negotiators, Leonen and Ferrer have been engaged in peace advocacy through civil society.

Ferrer oversaw the independent monitoring of the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and the International Humanitarian Law between government and Maoist rebels through the movement Sulong CARHRIHL.

For a long time, Leonen helped advance indigenous peoples struggles for self-determination principally through the Legal Rights and Natural Resource Center which he cofounded.

Mohagher Iqbal, chief MILF negotiator, said the personal comfort of interacting with the “articulate and amiable” Leonen “hastens the process.”

“It is, in itself, a gain,” Iqbal pointed out.

After three formal meetings of the panels, the Mindanao peace process has, at best, achieved modest gains in the negotiating table under the year-old Aquino administration.

“In every undertaking, how to start is very difficult; and we have started… Despite the initial rough-sailing, we are slowly inching our way forward,” Iqbal said.

Iqbal stressed that “the most outstanding gain is we have continued the journey of peace.”

He also cited as gains the agreements on important issues in the side agenda especially the participation of the peace talk’s International Contact Group in plenary sessions of the panels.

This expanded the number of independent entities, apart from the Malaysian facilitator, who has a direct look at and feel of the negotiation’s dynamics.

Public outreach

Another significant achievement was the conduct of parallel public consultations by both the government and MILF panels which aided the buildup of a critical peace constituency.

So far, each panel has conducted at least 15 consultations with various sectors throughout the country, although most of these were held in Mindanao.

On assuming his role, Leonen vowed “to come to where the people are.”

For the MILF, the consultations helped clarify less understood notions about its demand for a Bangsamoro substate, said Iqbal.

“We have put our key messages across” especially dispelling the usual suspicion the MILF proposal is a veiled demand for independence, hence, lead to dismemberment of the Philippine republic, he added.

Although it was not revealing much, the government panel’s consultations especially with local governments, according to sources, sharpened its negotiating positions and provided clues on how to manage a future peace transition.

Business backing

Largely, Leonen had succeeded on his promise to make the process “inclusive, consultative and, as far as practicable within the negotiating framework, transparent” to avoid previous mistakes.

Owing to public outreach efforts by the MILF, top Mindanao business leaders have strongly supported a negotiated political settlement to accommodate the Moro aspiration for self-governance. This is a first in the peace process’ 14-year history.

The business leaders found the peace process an opportunity to help address the wide regional disparities in the national government’s policy and resource allocation priority that has long bedeviled development efforts in Mindanao.

Early on, Leonen revealed that “the president is engaged” in the peace process with Moro rebels.

“We have worked with the president; (he) sits down with your panel and engages in interesting discussion,” Leonen told a public gathering in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte, late last year.

He emphasized that this should allay fears the government panel would be constrained by the Cabinet’s bureaucratic maze in firming up its negotiating positions.

Problem-solving

The continued expectations that the Leonen panel is still poised to deliver significant results are partly founded on its bold perspective of dealing with the negotiations.

“We accept the framework of the MILF (that) the kind of negotiation that we are to continue should be … how to solve the Bangsamoro problem,” Leonen has declared.

“Only by virtue of problem-solving can we really have a sincere chance of being able to bring about peace,” he added.

Leonen said the starting point for an earnest look at the problem is that both parties come to a “common understanding how it (Moro conflict) got to be that way.”

“We hope we will not spend too much time on that,” he added.

Leonen was optimistic about magnifying the ethnolinguistic nuances of Philippine society as basis for political accommodation without abandoning the concepts of national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“For truly we have a lot of histories which have not been justly recognized,” he emphasized.

“The fullest measure of government’s sincerity can only be gleaned from its overdue peace formula,” a joint statement from 20 peace groups stressed.

Iqbal said the current lull in substantive negotiations “is certainly feeding on the appetite of both the spoilers and the hardliners” within the ranks of the government and the MILF.

Telling Mr. Aquino to “seize this moment,” Iqbal is worried a peace settlement might already be “hard to push in his third or fourth year in office.”