Members of the MILF peace panel led by its chairman, Mohagher Iqbal, and other panel members Maulana Alonto, Michael Mastura, Abdullah Camlian, Abhoud Syed Lingga and Antonio Kinoc, were invited to Japan by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) from March 17 - 23. Several members of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission were also part of the study tour in Tokyo and Hiroshima.
The Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) members were recently appointed by President Benigno Aquino to draft the Bangsamoro Basic Law in accordance to the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and its Annexes. For the GPH, members of the BTC who attended the study tour are former Ambassador Akmad Sakkam, Froilyn Mendoza, Pedrito Eisma and Talib Benito. MILF members of the BTC are Mohagher Iqbal, as chairman, Said Shiek, Raissa Jajurie, Ibrahim Ali, Abdullah Camlian, Maulana Alonto, Hussein Munoz and Melanio Ulama. Technical and legal experts also accompanied the group in the person of Atty. Ishak Mastura, Atty. Roslaine Maniri and Anuas Serad. Cotabato City JICA office staff Samrah Karon was included in the group.
The highlight of the trip was the courtesy call of the MILF peace panel to the Japanese Parliamentary Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minoru Kiuchi. Japan has been actively involved in the GPH-MILF peace process as a member state of the International Contact Group (ICG) that is overseeing the peace process together with countries, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Japan is likewise a member of the International Monitoring Team that is keeping the GPH-MILF ceasefire in place led by Malaysia together with Indonesia, Brunei, Norway, Libya and the European Union. In Hiroshima, the group also met with Hidehiko Yuzaki, Prefectural Governor of Hiroshima. The group visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial established in the grounds where the first atomic bomb in history was used against a civilian population in World War II.
Lectures were conducted by Professors from the National Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo on the following subject matters: 1. Regional dynamics affecting the future of Mindanao and direction of state-building, which lecture was conducted by GRIPS President, Takashi Shiraishi; 2. Institutions of government and public administration in Japan including local governance system; 3.The Japanese Diet, electoral system and political party system; and 3. Process of modernization and socio-economic development in Japan since the Meiji era.
Courtesy calls were made by the group to JICA officials at their headquarters in Tokyo, particularly meetings with JICA president Akihiko Tanaka and former JICA president Sadako Ogata, now senior adviser to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was during the tenure of Sadako Ogata that the JICA set-up in Mindanao its flagship programs the Japan-Bangsamoro Initiatives for Reconstruction and Development or J-BIRD. After the official study tour, the group visited Kyoto, the historical and cultural capital of Japan where the Japanese emperor originally settled for 1,000 years before moving to Edo or what is now known as Tokyo during the Japanese Shogunate.
Mohagher Iqbal, MILF peace panel chairman and concurrent Transition Commission chairman, said that the study tour to Japan by both the peace panel members and the members of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission is part of the confidence building measures between the government and the MILF as they move along in their partnership to settle the Moro Question once and for all. According to him “This is the first time that the GPH and MILF have gone together as one group in an activity conducted by foreign peace interlocutors, such as Japan.”
He added that such joint peace activities by the government and the MILF will increase as the GPH-MILF peace negotiations near their completion with only the annexes on normalization and power sharing and the Comprehensive Compact still to be finished after the annex on wealth sharing’s draft was completed last month and the annex on transition arrangement and modalities was signed by the negotiating parties. In the meantime, the GPH and MILF peace panels are scheduled to meet again in Kuala Lumpur on March 25.
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