MILF is easy to deal with
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This editorial originally appeared in luwaran.com, the official website of the MILF Central Committee on Information.
The MILF is not a radical movement; it simply is very consistent to what it has committed and is being committed to it. What is settled is settled. All its previous counterparts from government in the span of 17 years of hard and protracted peace negotiations can perhaps attest to this characterization.
This consistency is enshrined in the MILF’s Islamic ideology that abhors Muslim to breach a contract, be it made with a Muslim or a non-Muslim. There is no difference in the gravity of the accountability or sin whether the aggrieved party is a Muslim or not. A commitment is a commitment, period. Moreover, inconsistency or using a more fitting term, backtracking, creates chaos and enmity.
The MILF is naturally easy to deal with provided that the other party also abides and complies with their obligations. And therefore, without saying, the MILF is hard to deal with if the other party dishonors or violates commitments made in signed documents.
It is this consistency that catapulted the GPH-MILF peace negotiations into new heights and successes including the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB). The history of the peace talks consistently showed that more and more agreements were signed if the sitting president in Malacañang Palace is trustworthy and straight-forward. The case of President Benigno Aquino III is our reference here.
This constancy also explains the staying power of the MILF. If other Moro liberation organizations lost steams in the closing stretch of their peace deal with the government, the MILF has no signs of it. The fact that the GPH-MILF peace process is really designed as a problem-solving exercise to address the Bangsamoro Problem/Question ensures the consistency of documents both in concepts and principles and implementation mechanisms signed from day one of the negotiation in January 1997 to the signing of the CAB in March 2014. Unlike the 1976 Tripoli Agreement between the MNLF and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and its implementing agreement the GRP-MNLF Final Peace Agreement in September 1996, which is framed solely on the grant of autonomy to the Bangsamoro, the GPH-MILF Tripoli Agreement of 2001 and its fleshing out in the CAB never forecloses the right of the Bangsamoro people to self-determination. Principles are not subject of negotiation; only strategies and tactics to implement them can be sorted out and agreed.
God willing, the MILF will weather all challenges ahead. If it had withstood the harshness of the armed conflict for 42 years, the challenges ahead can also be overcome. Of course, the task will not be easy. The difficulty lies in the nature of the MILF as a revolutionary organization, which had been trained mainly in armed combat but not in nation-building. However, in coping up with these challenges the MILF will adopt a policy of capacity mobilization; meaning, the MILF has to be inclusive and draws support from all sectors of the Bangsamoro. After all, the fruits of the struggle and the negotiation are for the benefit of the entire people of the Bangsamoro. The MILF is just one segment.