GPH, MILF Peace Panels to meet in Kuala Lumpur today

February 13, 2012:Peace negotiators of the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will start their 3-day peace negotiation in the booming capital of Malaysia from February 13-15 with the hope of resolving the stickiest points encountered by the parties in recent months.

Expected to come for the talks, on the side of the GPH, are Dean MarvicLeonen, Prof. Miriam Ferrer-Coronel, Businessman SenenBacani, and Dr. Hamid Barra, and Ms. YasminBusran-Lao; and on the MILF, Chairman MohagherIqbal, Atty. Datu Michael Mastura, Maulana Bobby Alonto, Prof. Abhoud Syed Lingga, and Abdulla Camlian.

Also joining the MILF peace delegation are Jun Mantawil, Mike Pasigan, Mhajirin Ali, and Atty. RaissaJajurie, who will sit in the MILF Secretariat. At present the MILF Secretariat is lacking with one member. Mr. OndelMeling, the second man in the group, is still bed-ridden and has not recuperated since 2006 after suffering from a serious stroke due to diabetes.

Datu Antonio Kinoc, an alternate member of the MILF Peace Panel, is not also joining the group. He would only be required to join the peace delegation when a clear agenda on indigenous peoples are up for discussion, especially when his counterpart in the GPH, Mayor Ramon Piang Sr. is also required by the GPH to attend the session.

During the 24th meeting of the peace panels last January 9-11, the issues that prominently preoccupied the parties are on power-sharing, wealth-sharing, and interim mechanism. They managed to come to understanding, short of a formal decision, on the powers exclusively exercised by the central government, but they lacked time to deal on powers which are concurrent to the central government and state government, and powers to be exercised by the state government. They, however, intensely discussed the interim arrangement for several hours, but it proved to be a very difficult nut to crack. Their respective roadmaps have many things in common but they differed substantially on timeframes and the need for mechanism that would ensure perpetuity of the agreement.

The agenda of the current session of the parties, the 25th, are not yet disclosed, but it is expected that they would continue the discussion of the sticky points enumerated above.

An effort by Luwaran to get some input from the MILF peace delegation failed. They explained that it is against established protocol of the negotiation to divulge any part of the negotiation, except when the parties agreed to disclose it. A case in point is the Report of the International Monitoring Team (IMT) on the Albarka Incident on October 18, 2011 where at least 19 soldiers were killed in an encounter with MILF fighters. The MILF peace panel wanted it declassified, but the GPH preferred it to remain a classified document. The Malaysian facilitator‘s position is to let it remain an internal document to the parties.

MILF Websites

http://www.luwaran.com/home/

links:

http://www.luwaran.com/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2538:gph-milf-peace-panels-to-meet-in-kuala-lumpur-today&catid=81:news&Itemid=457

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