We urge all communities and civil society organizations to rally behind our call for all parties specially the government deliver on its commitment in the Final Peace Agreement with the MNLF, and exercise all its powers to ensure that a meaningful and honorable peace agreement is signed with the MILF the soonest.
War has always been associated with Mindanao, but a long-drawn peace campaign has been vigorously advanced by all sectors in all fronts. Meanwhile, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which forged a so-called Final Peace Agreement with the government on September 2, 1996, is still asking government to implement many of its provisions. These have been identified and enumerated in the ongoing review by a Technical Working Group organized by a Tripartite Committee with representations from the GRP, MNLF and the now Committee of Eleven of the Organization of Islamic Conference that brokered the talks between the government and the MNLF.
While the Tripartite Committee is doing the review of the 1996 FPA, the government and the other Muslim insurgent group- Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are stuck on the consensus points both parties have agreed in the already 11 years of peace negotiations intermittently disturbed by pockets of skirmishes. The biggest among hundreds of skirmishes were the all-out-wars declared by former President Joseph Estrada in 2000 and President Macapagal-Arroyo in 2003.
The Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the MILF have practically resolved over 90 percent of the talking points they have earlier agreed on and are already gearing towards signing of an accord this year. What remains to be resolved is a single strand of the four talking points—Governance, an issue that falls under the Ancestral Domain talking point.
But while the developments in both the GRP-MNLF and GRP-MILF peace processes appears to have brightened hopes for a more meaningful peace in Mindanao, saboteurs and spoliers from all over lie in wait to devour whatever gains that have been achieved in these long and tedious peace processes.
The FPA, along with 192 other agreements that the Bangsamoro people have entered into with the government since the days of the Sultanates, are glaring proofs of how inadequate this country is in implementing agreements. This reality resoundingly tells us that peace processes do not end with the signing of agreements even as they teach us the hard-earned lesson of ensuring that accords have to be fully implemented to consummate any peace processes similar with what we have today.
Civil society participation in peace processes have, on the other hand, started to snowball after the signing of the 1996 FPA and henceforth continue to take a vibrant role in the whole gamut of peace-building. Some of them directly participated in the delivery of basic services to the MNLF communities in the 90s while a number have remained constructively critical of the process.
As the talks between the government and the MILF formally commenced in 1997, a number of civil society groups had already resolved not to merely entrust the people’s dream of a peaceful Mindanao to the negotiating panels. They struggled to insist that their voices likewise be heard in the negotiations. Various position papers related with the official talking points have been elevated for both panels’ consideration and notable among them were those submitted on Ancestral Domain.
They did not just engage the peace panels but communities affected by the war went out of the streets to demand a stop to the war in Mindanao. Aided and accompanied by leading personalities in the peace movement in Mindanao, the leaders of the communities affected by the war had their constituents’ voices reverberate in the halls of various government line agencies in Manila, the AFP, PNP and Malacanang.
These efforts of the people waged from all fronts have, no doubt, helped bring the peace process in Mindanao to where it is now—the homestretch of the GRP-MILF talks. They are also part of myriad
factors that have made relative peace blossom in this troubled, bleeding island.
Now that we have come this far, the more we have no reason to lower our guards because whenever doves are united, the stronger and louder the hawks become.
The spoilers muster everything in their arsenal to pound the united doves coveted peace into wretched pieces. Therefore, now, more than ever, is a compelling time for all peace loving citizens of Mindanao to congregate and become an ensemble of peace chanters.
We urge all communities and civil society organizations to rally behind our call for all parties specially the government deliver on its commitment in the Final Peace Agreement with the MNLF, and exercise all its powers to ensure that a meaningful and honorable peace agreement is signed with the MILF the soonest.
Only then will the song of peace finally reverberate in this land.
*IID is the lead secretariate of the Mindanao Peaceweavers (MPW).
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