Philippines and MILF move forward on Bangsamoro

Manila: The Philippine government and a former separatist group have agreed on power- and wealth- sharing between the federal government and the proposed autonomous Bangsamoro region in the southern Philippines, but the two negotiating parties haven’t as yet signed formal agreements, sources said.

“We are settled on power- sharing, but we have not signed it yet, It is still subject for review by both parties,” said Mohagher Iqbal, head of the negotiating panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The Philippine government’s proposed draft on power- sharing relates to the framework agreement that the government and the MILF signed in Manila last October. The government and the proposed Bangsamoro region in Mindanao will have reserved and exclusive jurisdictions while sharing power in certain areas, said Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, head of the government peace panel.

Iqbal and Ferrer did not give more details. They did not specify any contentious issues that they have yet to agree on with regards power- sharing. At the same time, they indicated wealth- sharing proposals have seen broader agreement, Iqbal said. But he did not reveal the proposed percentage of taxes to be shared by the national government and the Bangsamoro region.

President Benigno Aquino has already approved the draft of the Philippine government’s proposed power- and wealth- sharing with the Filipino-Muslims in the southern Philippines, said secretary Teresita Quintos Deles, head of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Process (OPAPP).

The technical working groups of the Philippine government and the MILF are still consolidating their respective proposed drafts on the normalisation of war-torn Mindanao.

This would involve the proposed transition of the MILF fighters. It is not known if they would constitute an independent group in the south or whether they will be included in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, a source said.

Earlier, the Philippine government and the MILF signed the so-called “transitional arrangements and other modalities which details the road map towards the creation of the Bangsamoro region” in the south, the source told Gulf News.

This involved the drafting of a proposed law that will guide Congress to create an expanded Bangsamoro region in the south, on top of an existing Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) which has five provinces and one city as members.

In earlier talks, both the Philippine government and the MILF initially agreed to allow six towns and 800 Muslim-dominated villages that are adjacent to the ARMM to be part of the proposed Bangsamoro region.

Residents in these areas voted for their inclusion in the ARMM, in the 2001 referendum for autonomy.

Both parties have also signed the proposed terms of reference for the Independent Commission Policing (ICP), which will submit proposed structure, and relationships of the police force in the Bangsamoro region, the source said.

Last October, at the presidential palace, President Benigno Aquino and MILF chief Al Hadj Murad witnessed the signing of the proposed framework agreement between the government and the MILF.

The MILF was once part of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a mainstream Filipino-Muslim rebel group which carried out a separatist campaign that killed 150,000 in Mindanao in the early 70s.

In 1978, the MILF splintered from the MNLF after the latter forged a pro-autonomy agreement with the Philippine government in Tripoli, Libya.

Provisions of the initial agreement were not implemented, but they remained a subject of comparison with the Philippine government’s second pro-autonomy peace talks with the MNLF which began in 1992 (and ended in 1996) and with the MILF, for the first time, in 1997.