The story of the Bangsamoro peace process is long and hard. In the 1970s, war erupted when the Moro National Liberation Front, led by Nur Misuari, launched a separatist rebellion in Mindanao. In 1976, the Marcos government and the MNLF signed the Tripoli Agreement; it collapsed when authentic autonomy was not delivered. War again erupted and, to complicate matters, in 1978 the Moro Islamic Liberation Front separated from the MNLF. Since then, a succession of governments initiated peace negotiations with the Moro revolutionary groups, starting in 1986 when President Corazon Aquino invited back Misuari who was then in exile in Libya.
In 1996, the MNLF entered into a peace agreement with the Manila government, then already headed by President Fidel V. Ramos. Misuari was elected governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. Unfortunately, that experiment failed, and Misuari was removed as ARMM governor after leading another uprising. He was detained by the Estrada administration. Later, he was released but returned with a vengeance in 2013 when MNLF forces identified with him attacked Zamboanga City.
In the meantime, Manila could no longer ignore the MILF as it grew bigger and stronger. President Ramos rightly started the negotiations process with the MILF. But during President Joseph Estrada’s early days, the talks collapsed after the rebel group failed to sign an agreement on the government-imposed deadline. This prompted Estrada to order a military offensive that saw military forces invading main MILF headquarters Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao, and other major rebel camps. Government forces won the skirmish but did not prevail in the war.
When Estrada was ousted in 2001, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo resumed the talks with the MILF. It took awhile but, in 2008 and with the mediation of a Malaysian official, the parties achieved a breakthrough with the initialing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD). Under the MOA-AD, the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) was created and the ARMM was expanded.
Disaster struck the process when the Supreme Court declared the MOA-AD unconstitutional. Before its decision was issued, the Court had ordered the government not to sign the agreement through a Temporary Restraining Order. It was a big embarrassment for the government and the MILF because the signing ceremony was already scheduled in Kuala Lumpur, and dignitaries were in that Malaysian city already or were on the way to attend the ceremony.
Hostilities broke out when the TRO on the MOA-AD was issued and worsened when the Supreme Court issued its decision. It took a full year to bring the process back on track with a focus on strengthening the ceasefire and preventing escalation of hostilities. It was only in early 2010 when the negotiations with the MILF returned its focus to the substantive aspects of the peace process. But time ran out and all the parties could agree on was a Declaration of Continuity.
The Aquino administration’s approach to the MILF negotiations started in the right footing, with the appointment of Dean (now Supreme Court Justice) Marvic Leonen as the government negotiator. Breakthroughs were achieved early in the process ending with the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro in March 2014. The agreement stipulates for the demobilization and disbarment of the Bangsamoro Army in exchange for the establishment of an autonomous Bangsamoro through an organic law that Congress would pass.
Unfortunately, the Aquino peace efforts ended in a bad way. The Mamasapano incident in early 2015 stopped the Bangsamoro Basic Law in its tracks as political support for the Mindanao peace process collapsed. At the end of the Aquino administration, the drafts of the BBL in the Senate and the House of Representatives were pathetic versions of the original text agreed upon by the government and the MILF.
On a personal note, I have been a witness and participant to many of these processes. In 1974, as a high school student, I led the relief program our school launched for refugees from the Lanao provinces. In the 1980s and early 1990s, I worked as human rights and indigenous peoples’ lawyer to support indigenous and Moro peoples’ struggle for ancestral domain and self-determination rights. During the MNLF peace negotiations in 1996, as an environment undersecretary, I provide legal support to our Jakarta negotiations. And in 2010, in the last days of the Arroyo administration, the President appointed me to be in the government peace panel. During the Aquino years, I consistently supported the peace process and worked to have a good BBL enacted.
I recount this tortuous history of the negotiations with the two Moro revolutionary organizations and my personal experience with the peace process to highlight its current state—which is the best it has been for many years. Indeed, transforming the government and MILF negotiating panels into implementation and problem-solving panels, moving the process to the Philippines and phasing out Malaysian mediation, expanding the Bangsamoro Transition Commission to make it more inclusive, and the overtures to the MNLF are all strokes of genius. On the last point, President Duterte has said many times that he wanted to meet with Mr. Misuari but the still-unserved warrants from the Zamboanga siege is turning out to be a major obstacle. Hopefully, some solution to this can be found as Misuari is still crucial for comprehensive peace to be achieved.
If there is any president that can complete the peace process in Mindanao, it is Rodrigo Duterte. He understands the problem; he knows the long-term solutions necessary to solve it—constitutional change that will allow federalism or at the very least the highest form of autonomy that is promised by the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.
President Duterte shows his mastery of the Moro issue by the appointment of Secretary Jess Dureza as his peace adviser and Irene Santiago as the Chair of the government implementation panels. Secretary Dureza is a pragmatic visionary and understands very well that development of Muslim Mindanao is the key to the prevention of conflict. Chairperson Santiago, like Dureza a veteran in the peace process and in the Mindanao development sector, has both the international and domestic experience move this forward. I am sure she and her colleagues in the government panel will be able to work well with their counterparts in the MILF led by the brilliant and passionate Mohagher Iqbal.
I was in Davao City early this week to be a resource person for the government and MILF panels for their joint planning workshop. One could not help but observe the atmosphere of respect and dialogue that now characterize their engagement with each other.
I have never been so optimistic about the Mindanao peace process. Let’s move forward on creating the Bangsamoro, making sure that we learn the lessons from the post-Mamasapano obstacle. In a later column, I will write about how a new organic law could be crafted, what it should look like and the process that could produce the best outcomes. With commitment, imagination, and skill, we can make this happen. And then peace will prevail in our great island.
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