‘Keep Misuari out of RP’

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel urged the government anew yesterday to keep detained rebel leader Nur Misuari out of the Philippines and allow him instead to go to a third country.

"The government should protect the greater interest of the people rather than implement a law just to prove a point," Pimentel said during a weekly press forum at the Sulo Hotel in Quezon City.

Pimentel, who hails from Cagayan de Oro City in Misamis Oriental, said keeping Misuari outside the country would "immobilize" the former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) from trying to destabilize the government.

The senator said Misuari may even be allowed to go to a third country "provided (that country) is willing to cooperate with the Philippines and would not allow him to go in and out of the country as he was able to do during the Marcos regime."

Misuari, former chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which had staged a 24-year separatist war in Mindanao before signing a peace agreement in 1996, is now detained in Malaysia.

He was caught in the Malaysian frontier island of Sempiras on Nov. 24, five days after his loyalists attacked three military installations in Sulu and seized several civilians in Zamboanga City.

In the same media forum, MNLF lawyer Macapanton Abbas Jr. agreed with Pimentel and claimed those advising President Arroyo to bring back Misuari to face rebellion charges want her government to fall.

Misuari faces rebellion charges before a Sulu court and is scheduled to be repatriated from Malaysia on Jan. 15.

"Those advising her to bring him back are the ones who want her out," Abbas said.

Pimentel recalled that during the administration of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, opposition Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. was exiled to the US to prevent him from organizing the opposition.

This, he said, was also the reason former President Corazon Aquino arranged that Marcos be kept in Hawaii after his ouster in 1986.

"Had the present government followed my advice last Jan. 19 to allow President Joseph Estrada to go into exile, then we would have less problems now," Pimentel said.

He emphasized that Misuari is not the problem in Mindanao but the inability of the government to address economic and social problems.

"You can kill Misuari a thousand times over but new Misuaris will emerge if the problems of Mindanao remain unresolved," warned the senator, who had consistently advocated the adoption of a federal system of government to solve the problems in Mindanao.