MILF forms political party, prepares for ’16 polls

From the Gulf Today (Oct 29): MILF forms political party, prepares for ’16 polls

A senior member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has confirmed they would form a political party in preparation for the 2016 election and signal a significant shift from bullets to ballots in their decades-long campaign to help bring just and lasting peace to restive Mindanao.

“We have already started to organize the MILF political party because as a group coming from a conflict situation to a peace settlement equation, we have to engage in regular political exercise — meaning not through the bullets anymore but through the ballot,” said Mohagher Iqbal, the front’s chief peace negotiator.

Iqbal confirmed the front’s decision in a talk with reporters during the launching of the European Union’s Journalism Awards in Cotabato City. However, he admitted they have yet to determine their candidates who are to run in the May 2016 election in which Filipinos are to elect the successor of President Benigno “Nonoy” Aquino, 12 senators, congressmen, governors as well as mayors and councilors.

Iqbal headed the MILF panel that signed in March the historic agreement with the government for the establishment of a new Bangsamoro political entity whose “core territory” is to come initially from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), one of the country’s poorest.

Iqbal also chaired the 15-member Transition Commission set up by Aquino mandated mainly to draft a proposed law creating the new Bangsamoro autonomous region.

The commission already submitted the proposed law to Aquino who, in turn, presented it to the Senate and the House of Representatives which started holding public hearings in Metro Manila as well as in selected towns and cities in Mindanao.

On Wednesday, Congressman Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao announced he has invited three former Supreme Court chief justices — Hilario Davide, Reynato Puno and Artemio Panganiban — to give their views on the constitutionality of the proposed Bangsamoro law.

Rodriguez chairs a 75-member special panel set up by House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte to tackle the proposed law and help hasten its passage in Congress.

Also invited to the hearing, Rodriguez said, were other legal experts like the deans of the colleges of law of the country’s leading schools like San Beda College, Ateneo de Manila University and the state-run University of the Philippines.

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