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Malang: We might end up becoming the Darfur of southeast Asia

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

ANC’s Tony Velasquez interviewed on August 18, Zainudin Malang, executive director of the Bangsamoro Center for Law and Policy, on the clashes that have erupted in parts of Mindanao and on the prospects for peace in the south. Malang has been a close observer of the peace process with Muslim separatists.

Q. What was your expectation after the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) in Malaysia, had it pushed through?

A. I was expecting optimism on the ground, not what we are seeing here, not what we saw today. I was expecting the complete opposite after they had signed the MOA.

Q. Are these recent clashes in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte an offshoot of the failure to sign the MOA-AD?

A. I cannot help but arrive at that conclusion. You know, there are only two ways to resolve the conflict: either through military means or through negotiations. And apparently, after the cancellation of the signing of the MOA, the product of a dozen years of long and hard bargaining on both sides, perhaps, there are armed groups who feel it will already be hard to resolve the conflict by way of negotiations. (more…)

Reality Check

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

By Ibrahim Canana

Sometime in 2006, if memory serves me right, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita told a group of foreign diplomats and media men that the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) finds it difficult to deal with the ‘Moro rebels’ because they are splintered into so many factions. Ermita was alluding to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) as well as to the various factions of the latter.

The point that Ermita was trying to impress upon his audience was that the negotiation between the MILF and the GRP, which was going through a rough time at that particular moment, is quite impossible to conclude because the GRP does not know whom to deal with. That is why, he averred, the Moro Fronts have to unite first and put their acts together before the GRP can ink a final deal with the MILF. This is not, however the first time that Ermita raised this issue. (more…)