MindaNews » PEACETALK: Filipino Citizens Still Optimistic About Chances for Peace in Mindanao.

by Steven Rood/The Asia Foundation, Mindanews
February 29, 2012

WASHINGTON, DC (MindaNews/28 February) — Peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Kuala Lumpur last week featured chocolates on Valentine’s Day. It was a light moment in talks characterized by the Malaysian facilitator as “sincere but tough.” As the next scheduled meeting in March approaches, long-time peace talks observer Carol Arguillas has taken to counting down the days to the end of the first quarter of 2012, which government peace panel chair Marvic Leonen once suggested as a time frame for reaching an agreement. As time marches on, it’s important to take a closer look at how we got here, and what Filipinos actually think about the long-running conflict and the prospect for peace.

In fact, the Philippines has had an extraordinarily long peace process with the Moro (Muslim) revolutionary fronts. In 1976 there was the Tripoli Peace agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that called for autonomy to be granted to 13 provinces in Mindanao and Palawan. But in the implementation, Ferdinand Marcos used his martial law powers to institute, instead, two autonomous regions which the MNLF regarded as divisive. After the fall of Marcos in 1986, the autonomy arrangement was re-worked under the 1987 Constitution. Despite the 1986 meeting of President Corazon Aquino and MNLF Chair Nur Misuari in Sulu, the MNLF did not take part in the 1990 institution of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Then, in 1996, a “Final Agreement on the Implementation of the Tripoli Agreement” was reached between the government and the MNLF, but to this day problems plague the full-implementation of that agreement. An upcoming March meeting between the government and the MNLF in Indonesia will be an attempt to bring closure to the 1996 Final Peace Agreement.

Read full article @ www.mindanews.com