THE government has been forging a peace agreement not only with foreign nationals but also with “fictitious and non-existent” people,” House Deputy Majority Leader and Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles said Tuesday.
He made the statement during the resumption of the House hearing on the Mamasapano incident, with government peace negotiator Miriam Coronel Ferrer admitting that the name Mohagher Iqbal, the name that the head of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s negotiating panel had been using, was not his real name.
“Mohagher Iqbal is a nom de guerre and Mohagher Iqbal is the official name that has been used in negotiations ever since the negotiations with the Philippine government started in 1997,” Ferrer told the House joint committees on public order and peace, reconciliation and unity.
“He has his own name by which he was born.”
But Zamboanga City Rep. Celso Lobregat was dismayed over Iqbal’s absence during the resumption of hearing on the Mamasapano incident that resulted in the killing of 44 police commandos.
“We are very displeased. They are showing a very antagonistic stand in the House of Representatives,” Lobregat said.
Basilan Rep. Hadjiman Hataman-Salliman, chairman of the House committee on peace, reconciliation and unity, said the joint panel hearing on the Mamasapano incident sent an invitation to Iqbal but got no reply.
Ferrer’s statement came after Nograles inquired on the full and real name of Iqbal.
Apart from refusing to give the real name of Iqbal, Ferrer also evaded answering Nograles’ other questions inquiry on Iqbal, such as the names written on the passport and voter’s identification card of the MILF leader whom the government peace panel has been negotiating with.
“I think that question belongs to Mr Iqbal, not to me,” Ferrer in response to Nograles.
Nograles said the use of alias in any public transaction or public document was illegal and prohibited by Article 178 of the Revised Penal Code and the Anti-Alias Law under Commonwealth Act 142 as amended by Republic Act 6085.
“He must affix his real or original name and the use of names or aliases or pseudonyms is punishable,” Nograles said.
Iqbal earlier responded to the criticisms by saying that he owned a Philippine passport, and that the allegation that he was carrying a Malaysian passport was “baseless.”
Nograles had earlier found it disturbing that, apart from entering into a peace agreement with foreign nationals, the government had also been dealing with people carrying fictitious names.
He expressed belief that the peace agreement that was signed by the government peace negotiators and their counterparts from the MILF was not legally binding because the name Iqbal was fictitious and non-existent.
Nograles said it was “very discomforting” to be told by no less than the government chief negotiator, Ferrer, that government had always known that Mohagher Iqbal was not a real name.
Nograles had earlier said, that according to his sources at the Bureau of Immigration, both Al Hajj Murad Ebrahim and Iqbal had no travel records outside the Philippines.
“It is hard to believe they did not travel because, as I recall, both Murad and Iqbal went to Malaysia and Japan to meet with our government counterparts in the peace panel,” Nogralies said earlier.
“But as far as the Bureau of Immigration is concerned those two have no travel records outside the Philippines, so they must have been traveling under different names.”