Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Secretary Teresita Deles and Chief government Negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer both gave a positive spin to the adjournment of last week’s 34th Exploratory Peace Talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

There was a need to show happy faces and speak happy words. For the talks ended in Kuala Lumpur without a closing program in which an agreed joint statement of the two sides should have been read and no date was announced for the 35th Exploratory Peace Talks.

The government’s decision to be positive was obviously agreed with the MILF side. The report on the talks published in the MILF central committee’s online newspaper Luwaran had the benign headline “GPH-MILF 34th Exploratory Peace Talks ends in ‘technical’ impasse.”

The Luwaran report dated December 16 said, “The GPH-MILF 34th Exploratory Peace Talks in Kuala Lumpur had ended in a ‘technical’ impasse after the Malaysian facilitator, Dato Tengku Ab’ Ghaafar bin Mohamed, adjourned the session Saturday night at 7:30 without a closing program, joint statement, and date for the next round of talks.

“The MILF peace panel did not push for a joint statement and date for the next round of talks, saying that there are no formal agreements whether in the level of the panel or of the technical working groups (TWGs) that merited mentioning or acknowledgment.

“However, in all other aspects of the talks, the parties have made tremendous gains on the four Annexes, Power sharing, Wealth sharing, Modalities and Arrangements, and Normalization. The work on power-sharing is 95% settled; on wealth-sharing, 60% settled; on Modalities and Arrangement, 99%; and on Normalization, 30%. This was the estimate of one member of the MILF peace panel secretariat, who requested anonymity, for lack of authority to speak on the matter.

“As early as the second part of the plenary session last night, MILF peace panel chair, Mohagher Iqbal, had forewarned the parties for the record that the two panels were heading for a ‘technical impasse’ after a grueling session that started in the TWG level the other day on the issue whether the MILF would lead the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA). The government peace panel wanted the “Bangsamoro” to lead it, which the MILF argued was a menu for the ‘struggle of the fittest and chaos’ as this would imply that the chairman of the BTA is open for grabs.

“In an interview with Luwaran, Iqbal said that he does not believe this position of the government peace panel reflects the thinking of President Benigno Aquino III.

“MILF peace panel member, Abhoud Syed Lingga, advanced the idea that the series of events both in the international and domestic fronts pointed to efforts to ‘reconcile’ the GPH-MNLF Final Peace Agreement of 1996 and the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

“However, he refused to add more details on the issue, saying let everyone discover the truth.

“Another MILF peace panel member, Maulana Alonto, who was sitting in the Panel-to-Panel TWG discussion on Modalities and Transitional Arrangements, told their counterparts in government that the MILF leading the BTA is a non-negotiable matter, arguing that the MILF has long been the partner of the government in peace-making in the 16 long years of negotiation and after it signed the FAB; but all of a sudden, the government would replace it with strangers to the talks. In the plenary session of the panels that climaxed the end of the talks, Alonto pointedly told the GPH Peace Panel that the ‘MILF-led BTA’ formulation that has been reflected in the Modalities and Transitional Arrangement Annex draft is a crucial position that the MILF Peace Panel can never abandon and therefore it is a ‘take it or leave it’ proposition to which the GPH Peace Panel should give serious thought to before rejecting or modifying it.”

A serious disagreement
It is a great sign that the GPH-MILF talks are still on track—not poised for a derailment—despite this serious disagreement. That the talks ended without a date for the next meeting and a statement summarizing the gains made during the sessions reflects the seriousness of the divergence of views between the two sides.

This divergence results from the conflicting positions of the two sides on whether to state that the provisional government, the “Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA),” of the envisioned Bangsamoro substate will be “MILF-led” or “Bangsamoro-led.”

The MILF points out that in some other documents previously approved by the two sides the wording “MILF-led Bangsamoro Transition Authority” has been accepted. But in KL last week the government panel could not agree with that formulation anymore. Why? The GPH side explains that the Aquino government must continue to impress the other Moro groups that the new political entity being built for them would be inclusive. Indeed, the Moro National Liberation Front—from which the MILF broke away—would have nothing but opposition to the proposed substate if it is blatantly proclaimed to be led from the very beginning by its rival.

But the MILF insists that if it is not proclaimed at the outset that the leadership of the Bangsamoro substate belongs to it (the MILF) then the dissolution of the generally MNLF-led Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) would be in doubt. Therefore, as an MILF leader has said, there would be chaos and the operation of competition between groups or “the survival of the fittest.”

Democratic system not acceptable
The MILF obviously does not countenance a democratic system in the Bangsamoro substate.

It has become clear that the MILF leaders truly cannot abandon the position that they and only they must call the shots in the Bangsamoro substate, if and when it ever comes into existence. But the government and Filipino Muslims who do not belong to the MILF camp do not think that is right.

We pray that this “technical” impasse can be surmounted soon, as both Sec. Deles and Chief Negotiator Coronel-Ferrer optimistically say they can be.