OPAPP: Opening Statement of GPH Chief Negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer on the 41st GPH-MILF Formal Exploratory Talks

From the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) (Oct 8): Opening Statement of GPH Chief Negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer on the 41st GPH-MILF Formal Exploratory Talks

Thank you very much, Tengku. Assalamu alaikum. On behalf of the Government delegation, members of our panel, Former Secretary Senen Bacani, Undersecretary Yasmin Busran-Lao, Undersecretary Chito Gascon, members of our legal team, and our secretariat. Allow me to extend our salutations to our Malaysian Facilitator Tengku Datu Abdul Ghafar bin Tengku Mohamed, whose barber I must commend for his very young and fresh look. And of course the secretariat headed by Madame Che Kasnah.

Our MILF counterparts in the panel led by Chairman Mohagher Iqbal, Datu Abdulla Camlian, Datu Antonio Kinoc, Atty. Raissa Jajurie, we are missing Professor Abhoud Linga who is on hajj, and Brother Bobby Alonto who we hope will get well very soon from his back problems; the other members of the MILF panel; the Head of Secretariat, Brother Jun Matawil; lawyers; and other members of the technical working groups and Transition Commission.

The state members of the International Contact Group (ICG): Mr. Ahmet Doğan, from Turkey and not Egypt; Mr. Tom Phipps from the United Kingdom; and who will be joined by Mr. Hirotaka Ono-san I believe, from Japan; and somebody from the Embassy of Saudi Arabia here. The ICG NGOs: Ali Saleem of Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD); Dr. Sudibyo Markus of Muhammadiyah; our warm welcome to Signor Alberto Quattrucci, Secretary-General of the Community, as Tengku said we will call the organization because of the very hard way to pronounce the rest of the name (Community of Sant’Egidio); and certainly the only rose among the ICG thorn, Emma Leslie of Conciliation Resources.

We are very happy to have with us today Congressman Rodolfo Biazon from Muntinlupa.  Congressman Biazon joined the Government Negotiating Team in our tour of Spain last year to learn more about autonomous arrangements in Navarra and examine intergovernmental relations between Madrid and Spain’s various regions.

If we were a class in that educational tour, we can say that Congressman Biazon was the A-student, the one who eagerly raised questions and seriously engaged the discussants from the different government offices in Navarra and Madrid. Expect therefore that because Congressman Biazon will sit quietly for now as observer, he will have many questions for all of us outside of the formal sessions.

We trust also that given his wide range of experience in the Marines, as defender of President Aquino against the coup plotters in 1989, and later served as her AFP Chief of Staff, and many years as legislator thereafter, he will be an articulate and passionate advocate of this process and the future Bangsamoro Basic Law.

Congressman Biazon, we will count on you to be our voice in Congress.
Later this week, we will be joined by one more member of the House of Representatives, Congressman Teddy Broner Baguilat Jr., as well as Presidential Adviser Teresita Quintos Deles and perhaps one or more Cabinet secretaries and another Congress official to witness, In Sha Allah, the closure of at least one of the two remaining Annexes.

We regret that the ex-officio member of the GPH Panel, Secretary Mehol Sadain, Chair of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos is unable to join us in this round because of his paramount duty as Amerul Haj of this year’s pilgrimage to Mecca.

And so it has come to pass that we are now on the 41st round of Formal Exploratory Talks between the Government and the MILF.

Going by the June 2013 survey results of the Social Weather Stations (SWS), a good 70 percent of Filipinos still believe a peace agreement between the GPH and the MILF is possible. However, only one-half of those people who continue to believe actually expect it to happen soon by or before 2016.

It is evident from these survey results that the key question to many people following up this negotiation is not so much IF we will have a peace agreement, but WHEN.

After the WHEN question, there are the even more difficult WHAT IF questions. Just to give you a survey of the “what if” questions we have received during our various consultations:

-          WHAT IF for some intent, malicious or otherwise, a case is filed in the Supreme Court against the agreements and actually prospers?

-          WHAT IF the Transition Commission is unable to finish a draft law by early-2014? Will Congress have enough time to work on it, when budget deliberations start once again next year, and who knows what other pork or other corruption controversies arise in Congress?

-          WHAT IF the President fails to muster enough support in Congress for this urgent bill?

-          WHAT IF Congress mangles the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law submitted by the Transition Commission?

-          WHAT IF some of the ARMM provinces do not join the Bangsamoro political entity?

-          WHAT IF traditional politicians end up capturing the Bangsamoro in 2016 and thereafter? Will the MILF accept the election results?

Those who have asked the WHEN and WHAT IF questions do so, not just out of impatience, but of genuine concern for the success of the process.

This impatience and the concern are also driven by the rise in violence perpetrated by those who want this process to fail.

From July to September, the GPH Panel Secretariat documented more than 50 cases of attacks initiated by the BIFF on civilian installations, communities, and military outposts.

The Abu Sayyaf and other criminal groups collaborated in some of these attacks, and instigated their own as well, such as the bombing in Cagayan de Oro City.  However, these did not match the scale of armamentation that we saw in the September siege of Zamboanga City by a faction of the MNLF.

In contrast, the ceasefire between the Government and the MILF remains steadfast with zero hostilities and increased cooperation in preventing untoward incidents and containing criminal activities.

This alone is good reason for all those concerned about peace in Mindanao, WHY, why it is important to pursue this process between the GPH and the MILF: so that this temporary ceasefire becomes permanent, and in becoming permanent, the other, better things become possible; and so that those who continue to take the path of violence will be isolated, and the rest who commit to peace will coalesce to bring about a broad consensus on the way forward.

We, the negotiating partners present here and the friends of this process in the room, will need to steadfastly work together to foil the many WHAT IFs. We carry a great burden borne out of equally great expectations.

We know that it will require a lot of hard work, the appropriate strategies, the effective mechanisms and collaborative approaches, at the soonest possible time.

Allow me to borrow words of wisdom from a higher source to help us in our task.
As my husband knows very well, I am not a very prayerful person. But the First Reading in last Sunday’s mass awed me as a message so fitting for this, our journey
With your indulgence, allow me to lift excerpts from the reading. It starts aptly with a lament over the man-made suffering around us.

How long, O LORD? I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, "Violence!"
but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.

And this is the Lord’s answer:

For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of  faith, shall live.

(Holy Bible, 1:2-3; 2:2-4)

 “The rash one has no integrity,
but the just one, because of faith, shall live.”

Indeed, if it has taken us a long while to put down in words and phrases in the Annexes, it is because we want to guarantee the integrity of the outcome.

We need to ensure the justness of the solutions we are adopting for one and all, so that with the faith of our fellow Filipinos, this agreement will live and let live the hopes for less strife, good governance, harmony, cooperation and a better life among the Bangsamoro and the whole country.

Padayon! Mabuhay!

http://opapp.gov.ph/milf/news/opening-statement-gph-chief-negotiator-miriam-coronel-ferrer-41st-gph-milf-formal