With only 2 years left of Bangsamoro transition period GPH-MILF peace panels finally meet
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 01 July) – With only two years left until June 30, 2025 — the end of the extended transition period in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region on Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) — the Peace Implementing Panels of the Philippine Government (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) met on Saturday to re-affirm their commitment and agreed on four decision points to help fast-track the implementation of the 2014 peace agreement.
A Joint Statement signed by Cesar Yano, chair of the GPH Peace Implementing Panel, and Mohagher Iqbal, chair of the MILF Peace Implementing Panel, was issued at the end of the day-long meeting, their first under the year-old administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The decision points focus on the normalization track of the Bangsamoro peace process, including the decommissioning of MILF combatants and weapons, redeployment of military forces, socio-economic assistance; and the investigation into the June 18 law enforcement operation where seven persons the MILF claimed to be their members, were killed.
The Joint Statement noted that the MILF Peace Implementing Panel manifested its intention to “pursue the established norm of launching” the newly-constituted panels through a meeting in Kuala Lumpur “prior to the conduct of any formal meetings, and the revitalization of the International Monitoring Team.”
The GPH Implementing Panel committed to “convey and elevate both matters to its principal.”
Malaysia hosted and facilitated the peace negotiations between government and the MILF from 2001. Peace negotiations were held in Kuala Lumpur that led to the signing of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB) in October 2012 which forms part of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) signed on March 27, 2014.
The CAB paved the way for the establishment of the BARMM.
The agreement provides that at the end of the transition period, the GPH and MILF peace panels, “together with the Malaysian Facilitator” and the Third Party Monitoring Team (TPMT) shall convene a meeting “to review, assess or evaluate the implementation of all agreements and the progress of the transition.”
An ‘exit document’ officially terminating the pace negotiation “may be crafted and signed by both parties if and only when all agreements have been fully implemented.”
The peace agreement also provides that the negotiating panels “shall continue the negotiations until all issues are resolved and all agreements implemented.”
The transition period was supposed to have ended on June 30, 2022 but in late 2021, a law was passed resetting what would have been the first election of the 80-member Bangsamoro Parliament from May 2022 to May 2025, effectively extending the transition period to June 30, 2025, when the first set of elected officials shall have taken their oath of office.
Four points
The Saturday meeting was the first time the Peace Implementing Panels met under the year-old Marcos, Jr. administration. Marcos was sworn in as President on June 30, 2022. It took him over a month to name the 80 members of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA). He administered their oath in Malacañang on August 12, 2002 and graced the inaugural session at the Shariff Kabungsuan Cultural Complex in Cotabato City a month later, on September 15.
“The path to lasting peace is always under construction. But we walk this path together and we walk it, not because it is an easy one. We walk this path together because even if it is difficult, we know that at the end of the journey is historical justice, progress, peace, stability, and the unity that our peoples and our nation have long aspired for and so rightly deserve,” Marcos told the BTA members.
The first of the four points the panels agreed upon during their meeting here is on the Datu Paglas law enforcement operation, with both panels expressing their sympathies to the bereaved families of the seven victims and thanking the President for “swiftly directing” the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation. But the MILF panel “reiterated the indispensability of a separate inquiry by an independent body to bolster confidence in the findings.”
On the second point, the panels “discussed and agreed to further study” the proposals for the redeployment “parameters and areas” for the Joint Security Assessment Transition Plan for the Joint Peace and Security Teams (JPSTs) and the Integrated Framework on the implementation of camps transformation program for the initial 33 barangays of the six previously acknowledged MILF camps.
The third is that both panels recognize the “urgency and centrality of the full implementation of the decommissioning program” through the delivery of socio-economic development packages for the combatants. The panels also agreed to create a socio-economic study committee that would discuss and recommend for the panels’ approval, the components, implementation framework, and funding strategies for the socio-economic development packages for the decommissioned combatants and camps transformation.
For the government, the committee members are Undersecretary Zamzamin L. Ampatuan as chair, and Undersecretary Alan A. Tanjusay and Presidential Assistant on Bangsamoro Transformation David B. Diciano as members; for the MILF, Bangsamoro Social Services Minister Raisa H. Jajurie as chair, Bangsamoro Science and Technology Minister Aida Silongan and Director-General Mohajirin T. Ali of the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority as members.
The fourth point agreed upon is that despite challenges in the implementation of the CAB, the panels committed to “pursue the efficient delivery of the other components of the peace agreement” and to “intensify resource mobilization” to support the implementation of the CAB by engaging with international state and non-state donors who are willing to support the normalization process “subject to appropriate rules and regulations on the acceptance of grants, donation or any form of development assistance.”
The panels agreed that the modalities will be “further discussed.”
They also expressed their gratitude to the President “for his full support to the Bangsamoro peace process and his commitment to fulfill the implementation of the peace agreements.”
The panels also thanked Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez. and Bangsamoro’s interim Chief Minister Ahod B. Ebrahim, “under whose respective leaderships the implementation of the CAB has progressed,” and thanked as well the of the national government and the BTA “for their continuing support to the CAB.”
“The Parties, along with the entire peace mechanisms, re-affirm their commitment to the continued implementation of the CAB and the achievement of just and lasting peace in the Bangsamoro and in the entire country,” the Joint Statement read.
The panels have not scheduled the next meeting, said Iqbal, MILF Peace Implementing Panel chair and concurrent Bangsamoro Education Minister.
The filing of certificates of candidacy for the May 2025 elections, which includes the first election of the Bangsamoro Parliament, is in October 2024 or 15 months from now. (Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews)
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