PRESIDENT Aquino’s appointment of “highly respected” people who would be at the helm of the peace process in Mindanao is a “reflection of the government’s sincerity” in resolving the decades-old problem in Mindanao, said the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Naming Secretary Teresita Quintos-Deles of the Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process; and University of the Philippines College of Law dean Marvic Leonen as chief government negotiator in the talks with the MILF, a representative of the Moro Front said: “We know these people and they have [a] good reputation. They are really concerned in solving the Mindanao problem.”
Mike Pasigan, a senior member of the secretariat of the MILF negotiating panel, represented Mohagher Iqbal, the MILF’s chief negotiator, who delivered a paper presenting the MILF’s perspective of a “negotiated political settlement.”
Reading Iqbal’s message for the more than 100 participants to the two-day National Solidarity Conference on Mindanao (NSCM), a consensus building on a negotiated political settlement, Pasigan said the MILF wants to “believe that President Noynoy Aquino is indeed sincere in solving the problem in Mindanao.”
“Since the Aquino administration is sincere in solving the conflict in Mindanao, it must,” Pasigan said, “consider amending the Constitution,” which he said was recognized by both the government and MILF panels as a “major stumbling block in finding a just and acceptable solution to our problem in Mindanao.”
The move to amend the Constitution to cater to a political negotiated settlement with the Bangsamoro people drew support from the more than 100 delegates to the NSCM, among them Bishop Efraim Tendero of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches.
Bishop Tendero said the necessity to change the Constitution is long overdue, but moves for Charter change before had always been “tainted with vested political interest.”
The bishop, however, said that changing the Charter “requires a lot of things to do,” which includes dealing powerful politicians and businessmen who are “expected to reject it. Every time we talk about it [Charter amendment] there is always that rejection,” Tendero said.
If the Constitution is not changed, Pasigan said “the peace process will go nowhere. We have tried and waited for the government to do miracles, but nothing happened because of constitutional limitations. Without Charter change, I don’t think there will be a genuine settlement of the Bangsamoro problem.”
