No Charter change seen in talks with MILF

DAVAO CITY—The government has no immediate plans to push amendments to the Constitution to unlock the door that could lead to a substate being demanded by Moro separatist guerrillas, the chief government peace negotiator said on Thursday.

“Charter change (Cha-cha) at present is not a priority,” said Marvic Leonen, at a forum here attended by peace advocates at the Bishop-Ulama Conference office.

This was the same reason, he said, that the government’s proposed peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) did not contain provisions on Cha-cha.

“I hope you understand why the government is taking that position,” he said.

Leonen said the government “wants to deliver something that is already there (in the Constitution).”

“Our offer is autonomy in brackets,” he said.

Leonen quickly added that the autonomy the government offered in its draft peace agreement was different from the autonomy previously granted to the Moro people under a 1996 peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front .

He said the government’s offer “may even sound like the substate the MILF wants.”

“For all we know, we may only be arguing over the label, look into its contents,” he said in an earlier talk with reporters.

He said whatever changes it would take to grant “autonomy in brackets” will have to be made through a new Organic Act in Congress.

“But let me make it clear, this is not the ARMM (the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao), we are not offering the ARMM to the MILF,” he said.

Agreeing with the MILF’s position on the ARMM, Leonen said “ARMM is a failed experiment and we don’t want to go back to that.”

Leonen said the government was also reiterating its offer to partner with the MILF on socio-economic projects in conflict-torn areas in Mindanao even before the peace agreement is signed.

“If we have a joint coordinating committee for the cessation of hostilities, why can’t we have a joint coordinating committee for development?” he said.

He said there was actually “nothing new” in the concept as it had already been discussed in a previous workshop with the Bangsamoro Development Authority and the Office of the Presidential Adviser for Peace Process (OPAPP), in partnership with the World Bank (WB) and other donor agencies.

The socioeconomic development component is also included in the government’s draft, dubbed “Three for One,” which the MILF peace panel had rejected, he said.

The government’s “Three for One” proposal included the offer of autonomy, massive social services and the historical retelling of the Moro people’s history, acknowledging the injustice done to them as a people, Leonen said.

In Pagadian City, Edwin Capili, Mindanao vice chair of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), said the government and MILF peace panels can restart the discussions using the failed memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) as basis. Germelina Lacorte and Julie Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao