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By Angelo S. Samonte, Reporter
Authorities are looking at amending the
Constitution, through Charter change, this year to establish an
independent state in southern Mindanao and to break the impasse
between government negotiators and Muslim secessionists.
Jesus Dureza, presidential adviser on the peace
process, a few days before the New Year said the plan aims to
jumpstart the stalled talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
He did not give a date for the kick-off.
“This is one of the proposals the government
is looking at to get the peace talks moving again,” Dureza added.
He said the idea is to amend the Constitution only for the purpose
of installing a Bangsamoro state or a Bangsamoro region in Mindanao.
The negotiations set to resume in December 2007 in Kuala Lumpur
apparently fell through.
Dureza clarified that the proposal is not
intended to place the entire Philippines under a federal system of
government. Such intention was at the core of at least two failed
tries by the government to effect a shift from presidential to
parliamentary form of government. These attempts were made through
the so-called people’s initiative mode, which the Supreme Court
eventually declared as unconstitutional.
The MILF last week said the government’s plan
to resort to Cha-cha this year to get the peace talks moving is a
deceptive posturing.
It even blamed President Gloria Arroyo for
allegedly stalling the negotiations by insisting on restrictions in
threshing out the issue of ancestral domain, a major stumbling block
to the talks.
The MILF, one of at least three major groups
fighting for an independent Islamic homeland in the country’s
South, said it will never agree to participate in any constitutional
process to implement any agreement with the government. It also
clarified that it is not asking the government to violate its own
Constitution in order to give the country’s Muslim minority such
homeland.
The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and
the extremist Abu Sayyaf are the other groups seeking economic and
political separation from Manila. The al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf is
listed by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist
organization, along with the communist New People’s Army.
The MILF said the government could follow its
Constitution to deliver its commitments to them and the so-called
Bangsamoro people without obstructing the peace negotiations for
lasting peace in Mindanao. It has been battling the government since
the 1980s. The MNLF has been at war with Manila since the 1970s. It
said to be the mother organization of the MILF.
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