DAVAO CITY”•President Rodrigo Duterte will sign today the executive order creating the 21-member Bangsamoro Transition Commission that will draft the enabling law for the Bangsamoro.
The BTC has been expanded to 21 from 15 as agreed by the Joint Implementing Panels of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Malaysia last August.
GPH Chairwoman of the Joint Implementing Panel, Irene Santiago, said that of the 21 members, 11 will come from the MILF plus the chairman and 10 from the GPH, which will include three seats reserved for the Moro National Liberation Front-Sema group. It is the MNLF-Sema group that agreed to sit in the BTC.
Santiago said Duterte was expected to name the GPH members to the BTC. The MILF will nominate its members and chairman.
The BTC has until July 2017 to submit the draft law.
Santiago said the enabling law will be in line with the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, and that there will be a review of the 1996 peace agreement between the government and the MNLF to detail what has never been implemented.
MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari does not want to take part in the BTC because it is an MILF initiative based on the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro that is part of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro signed by the GPH and MILF in March 2014.
But he has already vowed to support Duterte’s inclusive peace initiative.
Misuari said he had trust in President Duterte who could solve the long-standing peace-and-order problem in Mindanao.
He came out of hiding after the standing warrants of arrest against him were suspended by the Pasig Regional Trial Court over the rebellion charges filed against him following the MNLF’s Zamboanga siege in September 2013.
Santiago said Misuari agreed to the convergence of the Bangsamoro people in the peace process to bolster the Duterte administration’s vision of a just and lasting peace in Mindanao.
“The convergence [of the BTC] will see what should be implemented under the 1996 peace agreement. President Duterte asked us to look into it and that it should be included in the implementing law,” she said.