MILF frustrated by slow pace of negotiations

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Jun 14): MILF frustrated by slow pace of negotiations

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has formally sent word to the government that it was already “frustrated” with the slow progress of the peace negotiations and that rebel field commanders were starting to lose faith that the Bangsamoro issue would be  resolved soon.

Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF vice chairman for political affairs, said Friday that the MILF conveyed that message to the government through Malaysian facilitator Tengku Datuk Abdul Ghafar Tengku Mohamed.

Frustrated

“We sent a message to the government through the facilitator, saying that the MILF is frustrated about what is happening to the peace talks now and the MILF is very, very much concerned about what is going on. In other words we are not happy,” Jaafar told reporters by phone.

Jaafar said the MILF ground commanders were “slowly losing faith and hope that the Bangsamoro issue will be resolved through talks.… They are angry because they have already been waiting for a long time.”

“As far as I am concerned, this is not a very good situation, the erosion of the confidence and trust in the Philippine government, that it is really (determined) to address the Bangsamoro issue,” Jaafar said.

‘Deliberate’ delay

Jaafar said that the MILF’s frustration stemmed from what it viewed a  delay in the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement, which appears to be “deliberate.”

For one, Jaafar said, the government has said that the formal talks will resume in Kuala Lumpur after the May elections and yet no date has been set yet.

While waiting for the talks to resume, there should have been an exchange of notes between the two panels but this was delayed as well, he said.

Jaafar said that Tengku handed the notes from the government only recently and the MILF central committee has asked for time to deliberate on them.

The notes contain the government’s proposed amendments to the wealth-sharing annex of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB). The MILF has protested the government’s move to make changes to the annex, saying that the two panels had already affixed their initials to it.

Exchange of notes

Government chief negotiator Prof. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer  said that “even without the conduct of formal meetings, the peace process continues to move forward” because of the fact that there was an ongoing exchange of notes.

In a statement, Ferrer said that “government hopes this process will allow the parties to gain more clarity with respect to the current language of the Annexes and lead them to an agreement on the unresolved issues.”

She said that while the wealth-sharing annex had indeed been initialed by the two panels, “prudence on the part of government requires that it undergoes a final review before the President gives his final stamp of approval.”

Ferrer said that the amendments to the wealth-sharing annex were being proposed to ensure that the Bangsamoro “will enjoy effective and meaningful fiscal autonomy but also take into account the legal, political, and administrative constraints of the Central Government.”

“These are the considerations as to why government wishes to introduce some changes to the draft annex, particularly with regard to some aspects of taxation, fund transfer mechanisms, and revenue sharing,” she said.

Blueprint for peace pact

Jaafar said that the MILF continued to bank on a peaceful way to resolve the decades-old Mindanao conflict. He added that the MILF also still “believes in the seriousness of President Aquino in solving the issue.”

“But he better check and ensure that what he wants to attain peace is what will prevail,” Jaafar said.

The government and the MILF signed the framework agreement in October, touted as the blueprint for a final peace accord.

But it has been rough sailing for the negotiations since then, with the panels hammering out the details of the annexes on wealth sharing, power sharing, and normalization.

The two panels have signed the annex on Transitional Arrangements and Modalities, which is the road map to creating the Bangsamoro region that is planned to take the place of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2016.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/426499/milf-frustrated-by-slow-pace-of-negotiations