Posted on 11/08/2008 2:02:08 AM PST by nickcarraway
Peace advocates are scrambling in a last minute bid to reduce the prospect of the Mindanao crisis spiraling out of control following the Supreme Court October 14 decision to rule the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) unconstitutional.
Amoran Andy Andoga, founding chairman and national president of the Filipino Muslim Democratic Alliance (FIMDA), says Muslim organizations and other groups need to go beyond fact-finding visits.
"We have to make steps bolder and more meaningful," Andoga told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.
He says his group along with other non-government Muslim organizations are trying to convince the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to once again sit down "in the name of peace."
He says he has sent a letter requesting a meeting with President Gloria Arroyo. "We are the people from Mindanao," he said. "We know the situation. We want to discuss with her the importance of creating another government panel to negotiate with MILF."
Andoga says he has yet to receive any word back.
Alongside their outreach to the government, peace advocates have also been sending representatives to talk to the MILF leadership to urge them back to the negotiating table.
"We hope that MILF will bring themselves down to the level of the people and find out what ordinary Muslims really want."
With the group's experience in dealing with different Muslim communities, Andoga says he already has a sense of what many want. "And it is not the independence that the MILF wants," he says.
"We love the Philippines. We are Filipinos, whether you are Christian or Muslim. What we want is a peaceful country," Andoga declares.
The Supreme Court ruling which argued 8-7 against the MOA-AD maintained the agreement "presupposes that the associated entity is a state and implies that the same is on its way to independence."
But during a press conference held at its headquarters at Camp Darapanan in North Cotabato in August to protest the earlier suspension of the agreement, the MILF leadership argued that the MOA-AD was intended to be a framework agreement and one moreover that sought only proposed only sub-state status and not full independence.
Same conviction
For its part, the Assembly of Darul Ifta of the Philippines, the Muslim counterpart of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, believes independence from the Philippines is unrealistic.
Grand Mufti Adbul Wahid Inju says there are no resources to run a totally independent Muslim territory. "We need a national government and national security," he says.
Instead of full independence, federalism is seen to be one possible solution.
According to Inju, federalism will provide Muslim people the autonomy to create laws and run an economy and government based on their traditions and customs.
This will be seen by many as taking the idea of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) one stage further in terms of providing "independence" to sub-national institutions. But it is more complicated given any future federalist solution would involve all provinces and not just Mindanao.
Alongside the efforts of Muslim non-government organizations, Muslim religious leaders are now trying to reach out to government officials privy to the peace talks with the MILF including National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales. The leaders are also trying to confer with MILF heads.
"What is good is that we (Muslim NGOs and religious groups) have the same goal, and that is to convince both panels to talk again. That, at least, avoids any confusion," according to the Grand Mufti.
Meanwhile, President Arroyo has reportedly sought to engage the governor of the ARMM and his son, the governor of Maguindanao Province, to act as a go-between in kick-starting talks between Manila and the MILF.
MOA-AD
While the MILF insists that the initialled MOA-AD is a "fait accompli" under international law and has to be implemented, both Andoga and Inju view the MOA-AD to be dead and buried and only now of academic interest.
Inju says that one big problem with negotiations is that neither the government nor the rebel group failed to engage with ordinary Muslims citizens and let them know what the MOA-AD was all about.
"The people didn't understand it fully and so they don't really know if it was right or wrong for the Supreme Court to consider it unconstitutional," Inju laments.
Presidential Peace Adviser Hermogenes Esperon who was severely criticized in the Supreme Court decision rejects the charge that there was a failure on part of the government to communicate. He maintains it held well over 100 consultations with different groups between 2005 and 2007.
Had the agreement been signed, he underlined, it would have still had to have faced a plebiscite, which would have given time for people to learn more about it.
In their 90-page decision, justices underscored what it claimed as the lack of public consultations on the agreement as required by law, calling it a "gross evasion of positive duty and a virtual refusal to perform the duty enjoined."
Despite the government's decision not to push through with the agreement, Esperon says, the Arroyo administration is still bent on pursuing negotiations with the MILF.
But according to Esperon and others, this can only happen if the MILF surrenders its rebel commanders Ameril Umbra Kato, Abdullah Macapaar and Aleem Pangalian who led civilian attacks in North Cotabato and Lanao Del Norte, killing dozens of people days after the MOA-AD was suspended on the eve of its signing in Putrajaya, Malaysia last August.
Hardy MILF
The MILF says it is considering appealing before the International Court of Justice or the Organization of Islamic Conference.
Mohagher Iqbal, MILF chief peace negotiator, says the leadership will not order its forces to launch attacks in retaliation to the spoiled MOA-AD. But at the same time, he stresses that the leadership cannot guarantee its forces will exercise the same restraint.
The MILF is "losing moral authority" to restrain their ground commanders he says.
"This development [the collapse of the MOA-AD] only highlights the fact that we can’t and should not trust the government. The Supreme Court's decision will not stop the fighting in Mindanao." (Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project / Claire Delfin - the author is a television news reporter of GMA Network, Inc. and a regular contributor of special reports on women, children, health, education, and the environment to the network's news and public affairs website, GMANews.TV.)
You realize, of course, that this thread was doomed from birth?
What can I say, I overestimated the maturity level here.
Some bait is just too tempting.
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