MILF chieftain Murad Ebrahim and his deputy Mohagher Iqbal. (Mindanao Examiner Photo)
The announcement came with the MILF retaining Mohagher Iqbal, a senior rebel leader, as the head of its peace panel. The MILF also named lawyer Datu Michael Mastura, Maulana Alonto, Abdullah Camlian, Professor Abhoud Swed Linga, Datu Antonio Kinoc, as members of the peace panel.
Two prominent members, lawyers Lanang Ali and Musib Buat, were replaced due to health concerns. Both lawyers underwent heart bypasses and are deemed unfit for long travel, hectic schedules, and strenuous, prolonged, and tiring negotiations, said Mohammad Ameen, chairman of the MILF Secretariat.
Camlian, the MILF said, was a former chairman of the MILF technical committee, and at times served as alternate member of the peace panel during negotiations with the Arroyo government.
Camlian is a native of Zamboanga City and Basilan and belongs to the Sama-Bangingi-Tausug tribe. Kinoc on the other hand is a member of the indigenous B’laan tribe from Sultan Kudarat province and had served in the past in the MILF technical working group and the front’s technical committee, while Lingga is the chairman of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies.
The MILF said it also formed a board of consultants, but their names were not made public, although two of its members are women – one represents indigenous tribes and the other an Islamic theologian.
Peace talks between the Manila and the MILF, which is fighting for decades for self-determination, was temporarily suspended in June after President Gloria Arroyo, who ended her term, stepped down without new agreements that would put an end to decades of bloody fighting in the restive region of Mindanao.
But new Filipino leader Benigno Aquino III said he would resume the negotiations after the holy month of Ramadan.
The MILF chieftain, Murad Ebrahim, said the rebel group is ready to resume the peace negotiations, but stressed that Manila should honor all previous agreements signed by both sides. “The two parties have to continue from where we stopped, and following the stipulations agreed by both parties as provided for in the Declaration of Continuity for Peace Negotiation between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front signed in Malaysia on June 3, 2010,” Ebrahim said.
He said if the Philippine leader is sincere in pursuing the peace talks with the MILF, Aquino can resolve the Moro problem in Mindanao within his 6 years in office.
“The greatest challenge to the peace process is whether this time the President has the political will to surmount all obstacles and oppositions including well-entrenched spoilers once the peace talks start or when an agreement will be signed. Running parallel is whether the peace process is truly a problem-solving endeavor or just an exercise to manage the conflict, as what previous presidents, deliberately or otherwise, did. We wish to tell you that whether in negotiation or in the normal course of our Islamic revolutionary struggle, the political aspirations of our people remain the same and constant – we want genuine governance for our people. We want our people to decide for themselves.”
“It is our hope that the Moro question and armed conflict in Mindanao will be settled in our lifetime, otherwise, this struggle of our people for freedom and right to self-determination will drag on for generation after generation. To ensure this, we are preparing the young generations to carry on the great task of liberating our people from the yoke of oppression and thralldom,” Ebrahim said.
MILF chief peace negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal said Manila previously offered the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao instead of what was previously agreed upon in the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain.
Arroyo opened peace talks with the MILF in 2001 and the negotiations nearly collapsed seven years later after both sides failed to sign any agreement on the most contentious issue — ancestral domain – which refers to the rebel demand for territory that will constitute a Muslim homeland.
The failed agreement triggered deadly rebel attacks in 2007 in Mindanao after the Supreme Court stopped the formal signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain.
Politicians and lawmakers, many of them wealthy landowners in Mindanao, opposed the ancestral domain deal and filed their petitions to the High Court and asked Manila to make public the rest of the agreement. They claimed the accord was made without public consultations.
The MILF said it will not renegotiate the ancestral domain agreement. "It is already a done deal; we have already initialed the memorandum of agreement on the ancestral domain. We will not revisit or renegotiate the agreement," Iqbal said.
But despite the ancestral domain deal, there is still a need to amend the Constitution to allow plebiscite on areas under the ancestral domain that would make up the so-called Bangsamoro Juridical Entity and give Muslims their own homeland.
Ancestral domain is the single most important issue in the peace negotiations before the rebel group can reach a political settlement with the Philippine government.
It covers the whole of the Muslim autonomous region – Sulu, Tawi-Tawi-, Basilan, Maguindanao and Lanao, including Marawi City. And some areas in Zamboanga Peninsula, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani provinces in Mindanao where there are large communities of Muslims and indigenous tribes. And also Palawan Island, off Mindanao.
Last year, Tawi-Tawi Representative Nur Jaafar filed House Bill 4963 and Arroyo, now a member of the Philippine Congress, also filed a similar bill, proposing to divide the Muslim autonomous region into two – the South Western Autonomous Region and the Central Mindanao Autonomous Region – and that a plebiscite will be held in every village in the provinces of Sulu, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga Sibugay and the cities of Isabela, Pagadian, Dipolog, Dapitan and Zamboanga. And also in the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte, Sultan Kudarat, North Cotabato, South Cotabato, Sarangani and the cities of Cotabato, Marawi, Iligan, Kidapawan, General Santos, Koronadal and Tacurong. (Mindanao Examiner)
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