If I were to give an unsolicited advice, I'd rather skip this planned pre-SONA meeting.

 

With due respects to OPAPP, it is unduly putting the whole peace process in great peril if the two principals meet WITHOUT FIRST RESOLVING the difficult issues on the panel/technical level. The divergent issues are basic and fundamental which both sides respectively hold dear, sacrosanct and inviolable. It is futile to expect the two principals to negotiate with each other and expect a magical result from that meeting. Conventionally, principals meet to only firm up certain resolutions and not to sit down and negotiate what their negotiators failed to do. Such a no-result meeting is dangerous because it will give wrong signals to the stakeholders. And it will deprive the negotiators the flexibility they need to continue seeking mutually acceptable arrangements.

 

If I were to give an unsolicited advice, I'd rather skip this planned pre-SONA meeting.

 

However, having said that, it may be advisable that if indeed Malacanang is transfixed with the idea that a pre-SONA meeting has to be held between the two principals, then the purpose should be just to keep the public informed of the difficult issues, exhibit optimism and perforce, for the President and Kagi Murad to give their respective panels more marching orders to do more work and find a common ground.

 

But to expect both of them to solve a problem their respective panels failed to do is futile. We have again to manage expectations because a total breakdown scenario arising from a high level meeting of the two principals may radically change the situation on the ground. The stakes are high.

 

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Jesus G. Dureza was Chairman of the Government Peace Negotiating Panel for Talks with the MILF from 2001 to 2003 and Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process from 2005 to 2008 under the Arroyo Administration. Currently, he is president and CEO of Advocacy Mindanow Foundation, publisher of Mindanao Times, and president-chairman of the Philippine Press Institute, an umbrella group for provincial and national newspapers in the country.

 

Author's archives

Bangsamoro: Miscalculations fatal to peace pact | June 30, 2014

MILF peace pact: What if...? | April 22, 2014