Describing
2015 as productive but difficult year for the Bangsamoro peace process, GPH
Peace panel Chair Prof. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer said in a statement posted at
OPAPP Website on December 31 that, “The best thing about the peace process is
that the two parties have not gone to war.
The full
text of Prof. Ferrer’s statement runs as follows:
“Truly,
this is the best thing about the peace process between the Government of the
Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The two parties
have not gone back to war. We remain steadfast in upholding the ceasefire and
are isolating those groups that continue to foment violence. We are gradually
transforming the lives of the people on the ground, nurturing their hopes and
dreams for a better future. And we are so close to putting firmly in
place the needed institutional reforms to realize meaningful autonomy and
democracy in the Bangsamoro”.
However,
while the second year of implementing the Comprehensive Agreement on the
Bangsamoro (CAB) saw important breakthroughs in our Bangsamoro road map to
peace, it is evident that it also brought us unprecedented difficulties.
Many will
look back at the year 2015 and see the Mamasapano tragedy of January 25 as the
monkey wrench that was thrown into the clockwork and set back most of what we
have set out to do.
They are
right in one sense. Congressional committee deliberations on the draft
Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) gave way to about three months of televised hearings
on the Mamasapano tragedy. Subsequently, hearings on the draft law were colored
by the incident, leading to misrepresentations on both the content of the
pending bills and on the consultative processes that had been undertaken by the
peace panels and the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC).
It cannot
be denied that many of those running for high offices in the 2016 election were
catapulted to the public limelight in these acrimonious congressional hearings.
Such has been Mamasapano and its aftermath’s jolting effect on the public’s
sensibilities and the political dynamics it generated, in light of the upcoming
national elections.
But to say
that we have lost the CAB and the BBL because of Mamasapano would not be quite
right.
We have not
let Mamasapano define the process nor its outcome. Not that we are wishing away
the incident, which saw many Filipino lives lost. In fact we believe that only
when all facts are fully unearthed, with those directly responsible for the
debacle owning up to their mistakes, the incident put in its bigger context, and
the judicial process taking its course to extract individual accountabilities
from all directly involved without exception, will we find the public
understanding better as to why we have persistently, even stubbornly, pursued
the CAB and the BBL for the whole nation’s better interest.
http://www.luwaran.com/index.php/new/item/764-best-thing-about-peace-process-two-parties-have-not-gone-back-to-war-ferrer
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