Jeddah meeting to clarify ’96 MNLF-gov‘t peace pact

COTABATO CITY — The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) is optimistic that provisions in the 1996 MNLF-government peace agreement will be clarified in a tripartite meeting to be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in July.

The tripartite meeting will be attended by representatives from the government, the MNLF, and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).

However, Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, who is the MNLF’s secretary-general, said their central leadership core, which include jailed former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Nur Misuari, have yet to decide on who would represent the front in the tripartite meeting.

"We have not agreed yet on who would be sent to Jeddah. The decision will also depend on the invitation of the OIC for the MNLF to join the meeting," Sema said.

The OIC helped broker the government-MNLF-government truce pact, which ended the front’s 30-year struggle for Muslim-rule in the south, which subsequently paved the way for the integration of some 8,000 Moro fighters into the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Sema said members of the MNLF are hoping that the government would allow Misuari, detained on rebellion charges since 2002, to attend the tripartite meeting.

The MNLF has been complaining about the government’s alleged non-compliance of certain provisions of the peace accord.

Sema said they do not recognize until now the Republic Act 9054 or the charter of the expanded ARMM, which was ratified on Aug. 14, 2001 through a plebiscite in the Special Zone of Peace and Development (SZOPAD), or the 10 cities and 14 provinces supposedly covered by the truce.

Sema said many of the provisions in the charter are not tailor-fit to the Moro-led governing mechanism agreed by the government and MNLF negotiators both in the 1976 Tripoli Agreement and the 1996 final peace pact.

"We don’t care who would sit as chief executive of that governing mechanism as long as the set-up of the autonomous bureaucracy is patterned according to the agreement of the two sides," Sema said.

For MNLF leaders, there was not enough time to disseminate information on the intricacies of the peace pact and the benefits of expanding the autonomous region prior to the conduct of a plebiscite for the ratification of RA 9054 in 2001.

"The constraint resulted in a virtually miserable turn out in the plebiscite," Sema said.

An incumbent provincial governor, who was a former member of the now defunct Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD), the transitory mechanism for the expansion of Mindanao autonomy, has alleged that "not even a dozen" of the more than 400 resolutions they passed, all identifying viable socio-economic projects for SZOPAD, have been given attention by the national government.

The multi-sectoral SPCPD, chaired by Misuari, was composed of local officials, religious and traditional Moro and hinterland tribal leaders from across the SZOPAD area. The council existed from 1996 to 2001.

"At first there was full of optimism and enthusiasms among us, members of the SPCPD, but after more than a year, we lost interest in attending the meetings because all of our proposals for socio-economic projects in the SZOPAD practically went to waste," said a religious leader in Sarangani province.

A prominent member of the Catholic community in Central Mindanao said that among the proposals of the SPCPD was for the national government to focus attention on the improvement of the airports in the Cotabato and Pagadian.

"These two airports are now both in very poor condition," he told The Star.

Another thorny issue for the MNLF is the supposed sharing of revenues generated from the area by the ARMM and the national government.

The MNLF wants a bigger portion of all taxes and other income generated by line agencies.

Sema said the MNLF wants all of their complaints discussed "under the spirit of fraternalism and mutual cooperation" with the government and the OIC.

"Despite all of our sentiments, we have never turned our backs from the peace agreement. We just want it improved," Sema said.

Speaker Paisalin Tago of the ARMM’s Regional Assembly, dubbed as the region’s "little Congress," said they are ready to enact laws that can enhance the government’s peace overture with the MNLF and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

"As long as it is within the ambit of the assembly’s power, we can pass regional laws that can complement what the MNLF has perceived as weak provisions of R.A. 9054," said Tago, an ethnic Maranaw who hails from Lanao del Sur.

Tago said ARMM Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan has lately been reaching out to foreign donors who can bankroll socio-economic projects in areas where MNLF members reside.