Manila Presidential peace adviser Annabele Abaya said before the Supreme Court that asking government and Moro peace negotiators to reveal the details of a supposed interim peace agreement was "premature" considering that a pact is yet to be hammered out.
Short of saying that petitioners, North Cotabato Vice-Governor Emmanel Pinol and his brother, Representative Bernardo Pinol are getting ahead of themselves, Abaya clarified that there is no peace agreement yet between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) as alleged by the brothers.
Right to information
Earlier, the provincial government of North Cotabato, through the Pinol brothers, accused the federal government's peace panel and the MILF of withholding details of a supposed agreement as they asked the Supreme Court to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the implementation of the pact.
In their petition, the Pinols invoked the constitutional right to information. They also added that the interim peace agreement is "about to be signed".
But Abaya denied "the existence of any interim peace agreement", to be signed by the federal government with the MILF.
"There have been an exploration of ideas, positions and proposals, but there still has to emerge a single working draft of any agreement, interim or otherwise," Abaya said.
Abaya said that after the government and MILF peace negotiators met on April 20-21 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, there had been no substantial gain in the process, much more, an "interim peace agreement", that had already been hammered out as the Pinols allege.
