DAVAO CITY—The Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front said Sunday they were ready to help draft a revised Bangsamoro Basic Law through a “Moro Convention” to end the decades-long conflict in Mindanao.
“It will represent the Bangsamoro and will no longer be the MNLF and MILF,” MNLF chairman Abul Khayr Alonto said.
“There will be no more fronts. They will be talking about the Bangsamoro.”
Alonto said the Moro Convention will be “a collective effort of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front.”
He said the convention will seek a draft proposed bill with wider autonomy for the Bangsamoro territory under a federal-parliamentary system, which would complement the proposal of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte for a shift to a federal system of government.
He said the two groups “will work hard to convince” Duterte to support the draft bill. He said he believed Duterte would bring “lasting peace to this country.”
Alonto said while the BBL had good intentions, it failed because of the lawmakers and President Benigno Aquino III who “killed” the bill by not certifying it as “urgent,” adding that the ill-fated Mamasapano massacre had left the BBL hanging.
“If you talk about the BBL immediately, what you mean is negativism, and what will come to mind is Mamasapano,” Alonto said.
He said the MILF and the MNLF “will be moving around the Bangsamoro communities” to present the draft.
Alonto, who heads a faction of the MNLF, said he would be meeting with MNLF chairman Nur Misuari to “iron things out” between them and inform him of the intention of Duterte to have them united with the MILF, and “for the purpose of having lasting peace” under the federal system where a stronger Bangsamoro “can sit well.”
“I’ll be meeting our good Brother Misuari,” Alonto said.
“He was a good friend of our President-elect even before the MILF was established.”
Alonto said the Bangsamoro lost hope after the Mamasapano incident derailed the BBL.
“But we are here because that hope once again is revived and resuscitated because of the election not only of a true son of Mindanao but a brother by blood: Rodrigo Roa Duterte, the president-elect of the Philippines, the first Mindanaoan president,” Alonto said.