[Video news clip]
Government chief peace negotiator Miriam Coronel Ferrer on Wednesday expressed before the House of Representatives her disappointment over the negative impact of the January 25 Mamasapano incident on the peace process.
Addressing the
lawmakers present in the third House hearing on the Mamasapano tragedy, Ferrer
noted that many of them had actually expressed support for the peace
negotiations between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) before the bloodbath in Mamasapano occurred.
Most of them also
attended the signing of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and the
Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro in Malacañang in October 2012 and
March 2014, respectively, she said.
"Now
suddenly with the Mamasapano incident, it is as if it was the peace process
that caused all of these casualties or even the breakdown of this kind of unity
between the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines
"What we are
seeing here is that the peace process has been the victim of this unfortunate
incident," she added.
"The peace
process has been unjustly blamed for whatever happened in Mamasapano on January
25," she said, lamenting that they were not even made aware of and had no
role in the anti-terror operation of the PNP Special Action Force (SAF).
"In the last
two and a half months, we have suffered a lot. The whole country has suffered a
lot. The peace process, especially, has suffered a lot."
Forty-four
troopers of the SAF who were out on a mission to neutralize terrorists Zulkifli
bin Hir alias Marwan and Basit Usman were killed following an encounter with
members of the MILF, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), and other
private armed groups.
The encounter,
which happened despite the ceasefire agreement between the MILF and the
government, has raised doubts over the sincerity of the Muslim rebel group in
the peace process.
It has also put
in peril the fate of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) in Congress. The BBL seeks
to create a new Bangsamoro region to replace the current Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
Lack of
coordination among the PNP, AFP, MILF, and the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group
(AHJAG), as called for by the mechanisms under the ceasefire agreement, has
been blamed as one of the factors that led to the bloodbath.
According to Ferrer,
the unfortunate incident, which also saw 17 MILF fighters dead, could have not
happened "if certain protocols were observed, and that kind of trust and
cooperation were respected among the different actors responsible particularly
for the law enforcement operation."
GOOD
RESULTS
She cited the
AFP's recent all-out offensive against the BIFF in Maguindanao, which, she
said, had "very good results" due to "very good
cooperation."
She said over 100
members of the BIFF were killed and 10 high-ranking officials of the Justice
Islamic Movement (JIM), a splinter group of the BIFF, were arrested. On the
other hand, the AFP suffered only 12 casualties.
"That is a
very big difference from the kind of operation that we saw taking place in
Mamasapano last January 25," she said.
Ferrer said it is
not their mandate to identify who are the people responsible for the operation
which ended in the bloodbath, but said she hopes they will be "man
enough" to stand for their actions' consequences.
"If we are
woman enough to stand up for this peace process, we hope the men who were
responsible for this law enforcement operation will also be man enough to stand
for the consequences of their decisions and the risks that they decided to take
in order to conduct this operation," Ferrer said.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/04/08/15/peace-process-unjustly-blamed-mamasapano-ferrer
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