MANILA: The holy month of Ramadan has officially ended but for the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (Milf), it’s also the start of another phase of sacrifice as the laborious peace talks are set to continue.
The government and the Milf are coming off a successful round of negotiations where both parties forged a crucial wealth-sharing agreement for the new autonomous region to be called Bangsamoro. Under the deal, the sharing scheme would be 25-75 percent in favour of the entity on taxes collected from its territory.
Secretary Teresita Deles, Presidential adviser on the peace process, called the results of the recent talks — done in the first week of Ramadan — as a “gift” although it was among the toughest stages so far.
“We remark that this very important, very difficult negotiation was done in the first week of Ramadan, and you can imagine how, therefore, (difficult) that was,” Deles said in a past media briefing. “And, for us, it is the sign of people sacrificing, people moving, people agreeing to move from positions that this was, indeed, a very special gift of the Ramadan for the Filipino people.”
Political analyst Ramon Casiple lauded the latest development in the negotiations and regarded it as an important step forward.
“This is a significant breakthrough. It solves the question on how the new Bangsamoro autonomous entity will source the needed funds for its development and economic growth,” Casiple said in an email to Philstar.com.
The recently-inked wealth sharing scheme was the second of four key annexes that needed to be concluded under a peace deal envisioned to grant a larger autonomy to minority Muslims in Mindanao.
The talks, which are set to resume soon, will tackle the remaining but expectedly difficult issues of power-sharing and a programme to disarm the rebels and possibly integrate them into a regional police force for the Bangsamoro.
The negotiations between the government and the Milf aim to peacefully settle one of Southeast Asia’s longest-running Muslim insurgencies, which have hampered progress in resource-rich but impoverished areas in Mindanao.
Recently, the United Nations Development Programme released the 2012-2013 Philippine Human Development Report (PHDR), which showed that nine provinces in Muslim Mindanao have the lowest human development index (HDI).
The UNDP noted that most of these areas are conflict-ridden.
“Previous PHDRs have consistently shown that the bottom 10 provinces in almost every aspect of human development are also the most conflict-ridden ones,” the UNDP said.
Casiple agreed that the conflicts in these provinces have caused the underdevelopment. He said a final agreement between the government and the Milf, which would ensure peace in the region, should provide the Bangsamoro people opportunities for progress.
“The unstable peace and order situation in these places due to internal conflict is the main, though not only the sole, reason for the low HDI in these areas,” Casiple said. “The end of the conflict and the subsequent economic development should provide the major environment for achieving higher HDI ratings,” he said.
In a past article posted on his blog, Casiple further explained that Mindanao, particularly the Moro areas, lags behind most of Luzon and the Visayas in terms of development. He said Moro areas rate particularly high in poverty incidence.
The Philippine Star
