Duterte to discuss BBL with MILF officials

Presidential bet Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte will meet with officials of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Camp Darapanan, Sultan Kudarat, in Maguindanao on Saturday.

Duterte will visit the rebel’s main camp to talk with MILF officials about the Mindanao problem and the Moro people’s dream of creating a Bangsamoro territory through the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).

During his sortie in Cebu City on Thursday, Duterte slammed the Aquino administration’s failure to come up with a meaningful and long-lasting solution to the Mindanao problem.

“They dribbled BBL,” he said before thousands of residents of Danao, the hometown of his parents.

“Nothing happened under the administration,” he added.

He warned that the Mindanao conflict would continue if the government would not be able to “correct the historical wrong committed against the Moro people.”

“If this will explode we can only expect the worst,” he said.

But he said “we cannot allow war” because “it will only fracture the nation,” adding that he had been asking our Moro people to be patient.

“I have been asking our brothers and sisters to wait for a while, to wait for the right time. I promised them that we will come up with something that will solve their problems,” he said.

He said people in Mindanao could not afford to just “kill each other.”

“Ano ang gagawin natin? Magpatayan tayo? And at the end of the day magbilang tayo ng mga  patay—ilan ang Muslim, ilan ang Kristiyano, ilan ang sundalo?” he said.

After the BBL failed to pass Congress, the tough-talking mayor vowed to push for federalism as an alternative to the law.

“With the failure of BBL, there is a great, great hurt there (Mindanao),” Duterte said during the first presidential debate in Cagayan de Oro on Feb. 21.

The controversial mayor said federalism would empower local governments and pave the way for prosperity in Mindanao.

He also said a federal form of government would bring peace and order in Mindanao.

“Nothing short can bring peace in Mindanao,” he said. RC