Zamboanga communities asked to support peace deal with MILF

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - The government’s peace panel on Tuesday urged Zamboanga City’s cross-section communities to support Malacañang’s effort to strike a comprehensively inclusive truce with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

GPH chief negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer made the call during a dialogue with leaders of local sectors in Zamboanga City, according to a statement emailed by the Mindanao Press Bureau of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

Ferrer said the purpose of the dialogues in Zamboanga City, which started Monday, is to merely disseminate the gains and dividends of the on-going GPH-MILF talks.

Zamboanga City is not part of the areas the MILF wants to group together under a Bangsamoro political entity.

“We want to provide stakeholders accurate information about the goings-on in the GPH-MILF talks. Having accurate information will help us reach a common understanding,” Ferrer said.

Secretary Mehol Sadain of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos and lawyer Anna Tarhata Basman of the government panel’s legal team, helped Ferrer preside over with the dialogues.

“We want to know the thoughts of the stakeholders, and listen to their suggestions and advises because we don’t want the occurrence of armed conflicts,” Ferrer said.

Ferrer had told Zamboanga City folks that the on-going government-MILF peace talks is inclusive and both sides wants a peace accord that would benefit all sectors in Southern Mindanao.

The GPH panel had also explained the intricacies of the tripartite review of the Sep. 2, 1996 final peace agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and Malacanang’s plan of fusing the 17-year accord together with a comprehensive compact with the MILF.

The three-way review, which started in 2007 and aimed at resolving misunderstandings on the implementation of its sensitive provisions, involves representatives from the government and the MNLF, and from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The OIC, an influential bloc of more than 50 Muslims states, including petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa, helped broker the GPH-MNLF peace agreement. 

Several OIC member-nations are also involved in the on-going GPH-MILF talks, which started Jan. 7, 1997, or less than four months after then President Fidel Ramos and Nur Misuari signed the government-MNLF final peace agreement.

Ferrer and her companions also talked about how the GPH and MILF panels intend to pursue the crafting, via Congress, of the Basic Bangsamoro Law to enable the replacement of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, whose charter is Republic Act 9054, with a new Bangsamoro self-governing region.