Estrada cautions Aquino on peace talks with Moro rebels

MANILA, Philippines—Former President Joseph Estrada urged President Aquino on Friday to be wary of what he described as the Moro National Liberation Front’s rehashed demand for the establishment of a so-called “sub-state” as a condition for any peace agreement.

In an interview with the Inquirer, Estrada said the new demand was no different from the MILF’s failed effort to have a Bangsamo Juridical Entity (BJE) under the previous Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Estrada, who declared an all-out war against the Moro rebels during his abbreviated term, said the President gave MILF Chairman Murad Ebrahim “too much importance” when he decided to sit down with him in a secret meeting in Tokyo last week.

“We can negotiate with them, give in to some of their demands, but sovereignty is non-negotiable,” he said.

“What sub-state? They’re just changing the names. In the long run, you’ll see that they will still go for a Bangsamoro republic,” he added, claiming that the old BJE would have established a sovereign region in the south complete with its own security force and banking system.

“If that plan pushed through, we would have been required to secure a visa to travel to Mindanao—that’s how ridiculous that idea was,” he said.

A senior MILF negotiator on Thursday made it clear that his group would settle for nothing less than a “sub-state” whose political structure would be similar to those of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Should the demand be blocked, Michael Mastura, a member of the MILF negotiating panel, said his group would go back to its old position calling for secession.

“We will not move out of sub-state. We have already moved from independence,” he told the Inquirer in a previous interview.

Estrada said the President should remain resolute against any effort to “dismember the country.”

“The duty of the President and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines is to protect our territorial integrity at all cost,” he said. “What will happen if we cannot even enforce our own laws in our own land?”

“As I have been saying all along, the government should negotiate from a position of strength,” he added.

Estrada said the government should seek to hammer out a peace agreement with the MILF within “three to six months.” The President earlier said he wanted to have such deal before he steps down in 2016, a timeframe Estrada considers “too long.”

“Our people in Mindanao have long been suffering. We have to have a peace agreement soon,” he said.