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By Dante “Klink” Ang 2nd, Executive
Editor
Anwar Ibrahim said on Friday that Malaysia
should rejoin the International Monitoring Team (IMT), which is
helping keep peace between the Philippine government forces and the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Mindanao.
Ibrahim, formerly Malaysian deputy prime
minister, is in Manila for a private visit with ex-Presidents Joseph
Estrada and Corazon Aquino. He and his wife, Azizah, were scheduled
to have a small, private dinner at Estrada’s house in Greenhills,
San Juan City, on Friday night.
Earlier Friday afternoon, Ibrahim said the
Malaysian participation in the monitoring team is important,
especially since it was successful in keeping peace in Mindanao. He
was the guest speaker at a forum in Makati City organized by the De
La Salle University Graduate School of Business and the Asian
Institute of Democracy.
Malaysians made up 41 of the 60-man monitoring
team that also included personnel from Brunei, Libya, Canada and
Japan. The members of the team left behind were reportedly leaving
by August this year.
The monitoring team was deployed to southern
Philippines in 2004, after the Philippines signed a truce and began
peace talks in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.
Malaysia, along with the Organization of Islamic
Conference (OIC), is helping broker peace between the government and
the MILF, a rebel group campaigning for a separate Muslim homeland
in southern Philippines. But Malaysia became frustrated about the
slow progress of the peace process, which was stalled on the
contentious issue about ancestral domain.
Ibrahim conceded that while there was a
legitimate reason for the pullout given by the Malaysian Foreign
Ministry, the peace brokers must not stop discussing how to resolve
them with the government in Manila.
“We are talking about lives,” he added.
Since the pullout, several clashes between rebels and government
troops have erupted in Mindanao, and now the MILF is warning that
the fragile truce with Manila is in peril. (See related story A7.)
He said, “As a matter of principle, they
[Malaysian participation on the monitoring team] should continue.”
Over the longer period, Ibrahim said that to
achieve peace and economic development in Mindanao, authorities have
to address the issues of justice, human rights and the human dignity
for Muslims and Christians. He rejected a military solution to the
Mindanao problem, saying peace cannot be achieved with violence.
During the forum, he stressed the need for good
governance across Asia, transparency in government and
accountability of officials to the public.
He advocated what he calls “humane
economics,” a concept he said he borrowed from economist John
Kenneth Galbraith that entails government intervention to help the
poor instead of leaving them to fend for themselves in a free-market
economy.
Ibrahim also called on religious tolerance and
continued dialogue between Christians and Muslims, saying neither
should impose their religion on the other.
He added that there should be a push for the
type of Islam practiced in this part of the world. With the
exception of southern Muslim areas in the Philippines and in
Thailand, he said, “South Asian Islam is unique. It has been very
peaceful throughout [history].” He cited the case of Indonesia,
the biggest Muslim country in the world that went through dramatic
but peaceful change.
The dinner meeting Friday night in Greenhills is
the first since Estrada and Ibrahim have been freed from jail.
Estrada was convicted of plunder after a six-year trial but was
pardoned last year. Ibrahim himself was detained in Malaysia for
corruption and sodomy from 1999 to 2004. He was released when his
country’s highest court overturned the conviction.
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