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In a major shift in policy, President Gloria Arroyo
announced on Wednesday that she was dissolving the government peace
panel seeking to end in particular a festering Muslim rebellion in
southern Mindanao.
The announcement came a day after
The Manila Times reported that a top Roman Catholic bishop had
called on Hermogenes Esperon Jr., the presidential adviser on the
peace process, and members of the government peace panel to resign
over their alleged bungling of negotiations with the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front [MILF].
On Wednesday, Executive Secretary
Eduardo Ermita said that from now on, any negotiations with the
separatist MILF and other rebel groups would only proceed if they
disarmed and moved out of their camps.
“Consequently, the President
has ordered that the government peace panel for talks with the [MILF]
be dissolved to align all the peace initiatives in accordance with
this directive,” Ermita told reporters.
The government had also been
negotiating peace with local Maoist communists. In 1996, Manila
signed a peace agreement with another Muslim secessionist group, the
Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which recently claimed that
the agreement largely had been unenforced.
About 5 percent of Filipinos are
Muslim, making them the largest minority in mainly Roman Catholic
Philippines, whose military has been battling the rebels in Mindanao
region for the last three weeks.
Rebels brace for attack
Mohagher Iqbal, the MILF’s
chief peace negotiator, said Mrs. Arroyo’s move to dissolve the
government peace panel indicated that the government was preparing
to intensify its military attacks to include the entire rebel force,
not just the two commanders who led deadly attacks last month on
mostly Christian communities in Mindanao.
“I don’t want to imagine that
happening, but the MILF is prepared for any offensive,” Iqbal told
Agence France-Presse. “We have to invoke our right to
self-defense.”
Iqbal said the MILF leadership
has not been officially informed of the President’s decision
through Malaysia, which has been brokering the peace talks.
In a separate statement, Mrs.
Arroyo said her government would no longer sign a controversial
draft agreement that would have given the MILF autonomy over its own
Muslim homeland.
“In the light of the recent
violent incidents committed by lawless violent groups, the
government will no longer sign the agreement,” she added,
apparently referring to the attacks on four provinces in the South.
The attacks led by rebel
commanders Umbra Kato and Abdurahman Macapaar or Bravo caused the
death of more than 100 soldiers, rebels and civilians and displaced
nearly half-a-million residents.
Iqbal’s repeated refusals to
turn in Kato and Bravo, House Speaker Prospero Nograles said also on
Wednesday, showed the MILF’s “insincerity” on the peace talks.
“There will be no peace gained
through violence, no peace agreement can and will be reached through
intimidation or the barrel of a gun,” the President said.
The Supreme Court on August 4
issued an injunction against the homeland deal after it triggered
widespread street protests in Christian towns in Mindanao who
supposedly were not consulted on the agreement on ancestral domain.
Saying they were angered by the
temporary restraining order from the High Tribunal, Kato and Bravo
mounted the attacks.
The raids left nearly 50
civilians and soldiers dead, while subsequent military offensives
were reported to have killed more than 100 MILF rebels and led to
the capture of more than a dozen rebel camps.
Local consultations
According to Mrs. Arroyo, the
peace process would only move forward after the government widens
its consultations to include local executives in areas to be covered
by the homeland deal under the so-called Bangsamoro Juridical
Entity.
Also on Wednesday, she said
offensives would continue against the MILF but that troops were
directed to respect Muslim civilians during Ramadan.
The President ordered relief
agencies to also step up their efforts to bring food and aid to the
affected areas amid a looming humanitarian crisis.
The National Disaster
Coordinating Council said more than 470,000 people “are directly
affected and needing assistance of any form.”
“They either lost their houses,
displaced and/or lost their livelihoods,” the council said in a
report, as it appealed for private donors to send in food and other
supplies.
Lost credibility
Esperon should now go with the
decision of Mrs. Arroyo to dissolve the government peace panel,
Senators Rodolfo Biazon and Francis Escudero said also on Wednesday.
Biazon, a former military chief
like Esperon, said that under Esperon’s watch, the
“credibility” of the government peace panel as well as that of
the President had been lost.
He asked Malacañang to explain
“what the national policy [is] regarding the peace process” and
whether it is being merely “junked or reformatted.”
Escudero said the dissolution of
the government panel should be matched with the sacking of Esperon
and all those responsible for the “bungling” of the homeland
deal.
Sen. Richard Gordon said the
government must reconstitute its peace panel with dispatch to
minimize collateral damage to civilians. He added that the new peace
panel should be composed of legal luminaries so that any agreement
entered into with the rebels would conform with the Constitution.
Continue talks
Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas 2nd
said the peace talks must continue only after the government had
deployed enough number of policemen and soldiers in Mindanao “so
civilians would not go to the extent of arming themselves.”
He added that before pursuing the
peace talks again, the government must first be assured that it is
talking with MILF people who could really deliver.
Roxas and two other opposition
senators, Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada and Aquilino Pimentel Jr.,
expressed disbelief that the President did not really know the
contents of the homeland deal.
Pimentel, in a separate
statement, said Mrs. Arroyo’s plan to tap the Senate’s help in
the Mindanao peace process “indicated her willingness to rectify
the government’s mistakes in past negotiations.”
He called it as “unfortunate”
that the President came to recognize the Senate’s role in the
peace process only after the agreement on ancestral domain had been
“overwhelmingly repudiated” by lawmakers and local government
officials.
Copies of the memorandum of
agreement supposedly were sent to the Senate only after the document
drew flak from many sectors.
Pimentel, though, said senators
could assist in negotiations only in an advisory capacity. “It
would be inappropriate on our part to get involved in the
negotiations themselves. We are not allowed to do that.”
Lawmakers Rep. Maria Isabelle
Climaco of Zamboanga City and Rozzano Rufino Biazon of Mun-tinlupa
City said the dissolution of the government panel was a step in the
right direction.
But Biazon also pushed for the
resignation of National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales for the
“national embarrassment” that Gonzales had helped cause.
Rep. Mujiv Hataman of Anak
Mindanao party-list said the President’s move only set back the
peace process.
--AFP, Efren L. Danao, Sammy Martin And Jomar Canlas
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