Int’l body meets with gov’t, MILF negotiators on Bangsamoro police

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). INQUIRER MINDANAO FILE PHOTO

ILIGAN CITY, Philippines—An independent international commission has met with negotiators from the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front for the first time as it prepares to take on the job of formulating recommendations regarding the form, structures, and relationships of the police force in the envisioned autonomous Bangsamoro region, an official announcement said.

The first formal meeting of the International Commission on Policing (ICP) with the two panels was held on Monday even though Japan has yet to nominate its representative to the seven-member commission, chaired by Randall Beck, the assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, according to a statement issued by the Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process (OPAPP) on Wednesday.

“This is a getting-to-know-you session and we hope to provide you with some overview of the institutional context of the task on hand,” government chief negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer was quoted in the statement as saying during the meeting, which was held in Pasig.

Director Lina Sarmiento of the Philippine National Police’s directorate for community relations  provided the ICP members with the structure, history, and constitutional mandate of the national police force while Ferrer  talked on the legal framework relevant to policing in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Ferrer told the ICP members that based on the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB), the Bangsamoro police force will be “civilian in character” and “professional and free from partisan political control.”

“Such police force is also hoped to be responsible to the central government, the Bangsamoro government, and to the communities it serves,” she said.

Ferrer said the Bangsamoro police force is also hoped to be capable of addressing “the different security issues facing women, men, children and minority groups.”

She also reminded the ICP to be guided by its terms of reference in coming up with a proposal on what the future Bangsamoro police should be.

Beck said that this early, the ICP plans to conduct consultations related to finding the appropriate form, structures, and relationships of the police force for the future Bangsamoro autonomous entity.

“The ICP will be conducting wide-ranging inclusive consultations in Mindanao, throughout the coming weeks and months,” he said in another OPAPP statement.

The OPAPP  said the ICP was slated to start working by mid-April next year. With a report from Allan Nawal, Inquirer Mindanao