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By Al Jacinto, Correspondent
ZAMBOANGA CITY: The Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) on Friday asked the government to postpone next
month’s regional elections in southern Mindanao until after both
sides sign a peace agreement.
The August 11 polls in the Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) are “an obstacle to the successful
implementation of the peace process [because] if there is a peace
agreement signed [by both sides], we will have to wait for three
years for the elected officials [from next month’s vote] to finish
their terms [before the terms of the agreement could be put in
place],” said Ghazali Jaafar, the deputy chief of MILF.
“Three years is a long time. Many [things] can
happen within three years. There is a need to postpone the polls in
ARMM. The MILF is very serious in asking the Arroyo administration
to postpone these elections,” he added.
The Commission on Elections, or Comelec, said
neither the poll body nor the government peace negotiators can
postpone the ARMM vote. Besides, it added, there is no reason to
delay the elections.
“We cannot postpone the ARMM polls.
[Resetting] would be up solely to Congress, but it is too late now
because there is no more time [for lawmakers to act on the MILF’s
proposal]. We will go through these elections because we are
mandated by law to hold them,” Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said.
The ARMM vote “will not be in any way a roadblock to any peace
talks,” he added.
Food program
Despite hopes that the nearly 40-year-old Muslim
insurgency in southern Philippines may soon be settled, the United
Nations said it will expand its food aid program in Mindanao to a
further 500,000 Christians and Muslims.
The UN World Food Program, which launched
school-based soup kitchens on the troubled region in 2006, will
expand its coverage to 1.5 million people, country chief Stephen
Anderson told Agence France-Presse during an interview.
The agency supplies 12.5-kilogram packs of
cereals and beans to about 187,000 children in 800 schools every
month as an incentive to keep them in school.
The food rations are typically shared by the
families of the children who live in, or were displaced from, areas
of fighting between Muslim rebels and government forces or between
rival Muslim clans.
“We’re in the process of finalizing our
expansion phase, we’re not ending for at least another year,”
Anderson said.
He added that the assistance had stabilized
school-attendance rates in conflict areas of Mindanao, where only 33
percent of children complete primary school compared to 67 percent
for the rest of the country.
“The retention rate is extremely important
when you’re talking about education because once children drop out
. . . it’s very difficult to go back,” Anderson said.
In a country where a third of the population
lives on a dollar a day or less, the government said one in six
children are not in school because of poverty.
The targeted schools are in areas with the
highest child-malnutrition rates in the country.
President Gloria Arroyo’s government said this
week it hopes to proceed to the final stage of peace negotiations
shortly with the MILF after resolving the most contentious issues of
the protracted talks that mainly deal with control over the
region’s natural resources under an “ancestral domain”
demanded by the Muslim insurgents.
Anderson said even if Manila signs a peace
treaty with the rebels, “it would still take some time” before
these areas can be weaned off food aid.
“Even if you bring in resources, you need to
have structures, the institutions in place to handle them and that
usually takes a bit of time,” he added.
Vigilant military
Also despite possible order reigning in Mindanao
as a result of a recent breakthrough in the peace talks between the
government and the MILF, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said
soldiers will keep a high profile against the rebels.
“They [government troops] will remain on
alert, because there are others who may wish to throw a monkey
wrench on the talks,” he added.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said the negotiations
should continue since hindrances vanished after the issue on
ancestral domain was resolved.
He added that his group is open to a proposal of
Hermogenes Esperon Jr. on holding a plebiscite in 712 villages in
Mindanao for inclusion in the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity. Esperon
is the presidential adviser on the peace process. He earlier said
the juridical entity will be bigger than ARMM, which currently
covers four provinces.
Under one group
Kabalu said the MILF will accommodate other
groups, particularly the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), once
the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity is established.
A merger between the MILF and MNLF, however,
will not happen, he added. He cited MNLF ceasing to exist as a
revolutionary organization while the MILF remains to be one.
Leadership sharing is also an option and both
can become part of the juridical entity “so long as it will
redound to the interest of our people,” Kabalu said.
The ancestral domain covers the whole of ARMM
and other areas in Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga
Sibugay, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani provinces
where there are large communities of Muslims and indigenous tribes.
It also covers Palawan province in western Philippines.
Manila has offered to hold the plebiscite in the
712 villages and a shift to a federal system of government before
the term of President Arroyo ends in 2010.
Esperon said both sides will meet on July 24 to
formally sign a deal on ancestral domain.
Long process
The President opened peace talks with the MILF
in 2001 and vowed to forge a peace deal with the rebels before her
term ends. The MILF is fighting for a separate homeland in Mindanao,
whose 16 million people include about four million Muslims.
Manila previously offered the MILF the Muslim
autonomous region, which is composed of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao,
Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, among the poorest provinces in the
country. The MILF rejected the offer and insisted on
self-determination.
Peace talks were stalled last year after both
sides failed to sign any agreement on ancestral domain.
-- AFP with Jefferson Antiporda
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