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President Gloria Arroyo is to call for changes in the
Constitution to resolve a major obstacle that has threatened to
derail peace talks with Muslim separatists, a senior aide confirmed
on Wednesday.
The Filipino leader is to ask
Congress and the electorate to approve a shift from a centralized
form of government in favor of a “federal” system to accommodate
calls of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for a regional
government in parts of southern Mindanao, Jesus Dureza said.
President Arroyo’s plan
confirms a front-page story in the January 2 edition of The Manila
Times, “Cha-cha ‘key’ to MILF impasse.” Dureza, her chief
adviser on peace negotiations with the country’s communist and
Muslim separatist rebel groups, was also quoted in that story, where
he said, “This [Cha-cha] is one of the proposals the government is
looking at to get the peace talks moving again.”
On Wednesday, Dureza said Mrs.
Arroyo’s Cabinet agreed on December 18 “that this is the way
forward” after talks with the MILF broke down.
He told the Foreign
Correspondents Association of the Philippines that the initiative
would allow the setting up of an MILF-proposed “Bangsa Moro
[Muslim Nation] Juridical Entity” to exercise key powers over the
area excluding defense and foreign relations.
The electorate of the mainly
Roman Catholic Philippines in 1987 ratified a new Constitution that
set up limited Muslim self-rule in several provinces of the southern
region of Mindanao.
Nine years later the government
signed a peace treaty with another Muslim rebel faction, the Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF), which went on to run the so-called
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
The MILF, however, has rejected
the ARMM, composed of four provinces, and demanded wider powers over
a larger area.
Decades of fighting have left
tens of thousands dead as well as large parts of Mindanao mired in
poverty.
Christian migrants that now
comprise the majority in Mindanao are wary of Muslim rule and have
rejected proposals to expand the ARMM.
Previous government efforts to
amend the 1987 Constitution proved unpopular in the past due to
suspicion that the sitting President would use it to change a
provision that limits the Chief Executive to a single six-year term.
Dureza said the idea of a federal
set-up was popular in Mindanao, where there is a perception by many
that the national government has neglected the region.
He added that the Arroyo
administration was hopeful that if the electorate were convinced a
federal structure would solve the Muslim insurgency, “they will
give it to us.”
Dureza said the government has
yet to decide whether to ask the Senate and the House of
Representatives to convene a constituent assembly to amend the
Constitution, or to call on Filipinos to elect delegates to a
constitutional convention. He also declined to discuss a timetable.
The peace talks, hosted by Kuala
Lumpur, broke down last month, with the MILF aborting a planned
December 15 meeting to draft a peace accord for signing in early
2008.
The rebels want greater Muslim
control over the economic resources of the proposed Muslim homeland
in the Philippines, a former Spanish and US colony.
Under the Constitution, the
exploration, utilization and development of natural resources shall
be “under the full control” of the state.
Both sides reached a breakthrough
in November when they agreed to the scope and boundaries of the
MILF’s demand for “ancestral domain” or communal land that
Muslims lost when the colonial government introduced a system of
land titles.
--Afp With The Manila Times
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