DAVAO CITY—Key staff per-sonnel and peace negotiators of the two Moro revolutionary groups in Mindanao held their first meeting to explore possibility of getting their principals—Moro National Liberation Front’s (MNLF) Nur Misuari and Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) Murad Ebrahim—to meet.
The MILF—then led by Salamat Hashim—broke away from the MNLF in 1981.
Randolph Parcasio, chief legal counsel of the MNLF, told the BusinessMirror that some panel members of both groups were joined by other “inside negotiators,” or the key persons of the MNLF and the MILF in their first unity meeting here on Sunday night.
“It’s our first meeting,” he said. “And we were even joined by peace negotiators from the government and peace advocates from non-governmental organizations.”
Parcasio said the meeting was about exploring the possibility of getting Misuari and Murad together, previously left untouched in any discussion but which came out as an option to widen the chances of having a wider and unified peace settlement in the Bangsamoro areas.
“We have asked ourselves to talk to our respective principals to persuade them to meet and come together,” he said.
“And we hope that their historic meeting would result in better prospects of having a unity peace agreement with the administration of President Duterte,” he said.
Parcasio said, “It would be a great thing to see Misuari, Murad and Duterte together to craft a meaningful and peaceful peace settlement for Mindanao.”
The gathering would expect the MILF panel members “to persuade Murad to met Misuari, while I would also talk it over with Nur,” Parcasio added.
There was no timelime, but he said the prospect for peace with the Mr.Duterte administration would be faster “if the historic meeting would be held anytime before the year ends,” he said.
The prospect is not far-fetched, after the two fronts have been holding meetings already since 2006 under the auspices of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to unify their respective positions on peace in Mindanao.
It was at these meetings that the government sat down to explain its side of compliance with the 1996 agreement.
The MILF broke off from the then-monolithic MNLF in 1981 over ideological differences, with the former treading a more religious-based revolutionary principles and the MNLF holding on to being the political organ of the Bangsamoro. From then on, each group maintained separate camps and territories, although local units would occasionally figure in gun battle over clan differences waged through local fighting called rido.
In September 1996 the MNLF agreed to a negotiated peace settlement in exchange for government promise that they would follow a Marshall Plan-type of economic assistance and development activity in the Bangsamoro areas, which were supposed to be under the Special Zone of Peace and Development.
The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao leadership was handed over to the MNLF as part of the concession to agree to the peace agreement. The MILF agreed to work with the government to establish its own political settlement after signing in March 2014 the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.
Midway though, the MNLF warned its compatriots in the MILF to be wary of government intention after it griped over years of alleged government remiss
of its commitment to the 1996 peace agreement.
Image credits: AP