Patricio P. Diaz: "Looking into Jeddah Meeting"

MINDAVIEWS
COMMENT: Looking into Jeddah Meeting
Patricio P. Diaz

www.mindanews.com
14 November 2007

GENERAL SANTOS CITY -The oft-postponed Tripartite Meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia –
at last – started last Saturday, November 10, late in the afternoon (towards
midnight in Manila). With the OIC Peace Committee conducting the
meeting, the other two parties were the Moro National Liberation Front
and the Government of the Philippines.

The meeting was just the first – the exploratory stage – of a
series of meetings convened by the secretary-general of the Organization of
the Islamic Conference to review the implementation of the 1996 Final
Peace Agreement pursuant to Section 5 of Resolution No. 2/33-MM of the
Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in June 2006.

The ICFM resolution embodied the report of a fact finding mission the
OIC secretary-general had sent to Mindanao and Sulu in May 2006 to
verify the repeated complaints of the MNLF that the Philippine
Government had failed to properly implement the Agreement as agreed.
The fact-finding committee had coordinated with the Philippine
Government.

The question central to the meeting: How serious is the review of the
implementation of so serious an instrument of peace in response to the
naggingly serious complaints of one party to the Agreement, the MNLF?
The question, considering some intriguing facts, is not meant to
belittle the review.

Relevant Notes

• The May 2006 OIC mission led by Ambassador Sayed El-Masry of Egypt
reported the gaping difference between the Government's and the MNLF's
assessments of the implementation of the 1996 FPA.  Subsequently, in
its 33rd International Conference of Foreign Ministers in June that
year, the OIC called for "an urgent high level tripartite meeting" to
conduct the review. (Bold italics supplied).

• The meeting, set to be held at Jeddah on July 7 of that year that
for various reasons the Government – except for once by the OIC
Committee of Eight – had been repeatedly asked to be postponed, was
convened one year and four months behind schedule.

• A high level meeting should have high level participants. The OIC
Peace Committee, especially formed to conduct the meeting -- composed
of the Committee of the Eight, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan -- was
obviously high level. Can the same be said of the GRP delegation or of
the MNLF without Chair Nur Misuari?

• The GRP delegation headed by Nabil Tan, a member of the GRP
negotiating panel in Jakarta, Indonesia and vice governor of the
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (1993-96), was composed of
various-level ARMM and national government officials together with
some MNLF members identified with MNLF Council of the 15.

• Without Misuari, the MNLF delegation was headed by lawyer Randolph
Parcasio, Misuari's executive secretary when he was ARMM governor and
MNLF legal adviser. Closely assisting him were MNLF spokesman Al
Tillah and lawyer Firdausi Abbas.

• MindaNews (November 11) reported three high-ranking MNLF members
present at the meeting – Muslimin Sema, MNLF secretary-general under
Misuari and vice chair of the MNLF panel in Jakarta; Hatimil Hassan,
MNLF vice chair under Misuari and the present interim vice chair; and
Parouk Hussin, MNLF foreign secretary under Misuari and ARMM governor
(2001-2004).

• Sema and Hassan must be in the MNLF delegation.  Why did one of
them
not head it? Was it that as organizers of the Executive Council of the
15 they have not yet regained the full confidence of Misuari whom they
"retired" as MNLF chair? Hussin and another MNLF ranking member, Sulu
Rep. Jusoph Jikiri, were advisers to the GRP delegation.

• Will the meeting just review the implementation of the 1996 FPA as
complained by the MNLF? When Misuari, in his e-mailed speech read at
the opening of the meeting, questioned the "legality" of the GRP-MILF
peace talk, he was calling the attention of the participants to the
implications of that negotiation to the 1996 FPA.

The Thrust

The OIC secretary-general, Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, and the
tripartite meeting chair, Deputy Minister Rezlan I. Jenie for
Multilateral Affairs of Indonesia, spelled out the thrust of the
review (MindaNews, November 11):

• Both the GRP and the MNLF should try to find a way out of the
dangerous deadlock in the implementation of the Agreement, a situation
that had been "moving from bad to worse and the gap between the two
parties was widening".

• The meeting will focus on the assessment of the implementation
process, "defining the obstacles and devising the solutions – a "huge
task" that cannot be accomplished in one or two sessions.

• The parties must "exchange … general observations on the issue of
implementation, and from that … gather all the issues covering its
progress as well as its obstacles".

• We need to find out problems without finger-pointing, and to
harness
aspirations without recriminations.

• Based on the 1996 Final Peace Agreement, "the next challenges will
mainly be on the strengthening of the institutional capacity of the
autonomy and implementing further measures on the economic and
socio-cultural aspects of the Agreement".

The Agenda

As agreed in small-group closed-door sessions, the general agenda of
the review call for the scrutiny of Republic Act 9054 against the 1996
Final Peace Agreement.  Comparing the provisions of RA 9054 to those
of the 1996 FPA will reveal how Congress used the latter to amend RA
6734, the original ARMM Organic Act, to come up with RA 9054.

The scrutiny will be according to five clustered issues covering: (1)
Shariah and the Judiciary; (2) Regional Security Force; (3) Natural
Resources and the Economy (including mines and minerals); (4)
Political System and Representation; and (5) Education.

A six-member joint working group, three each from the GRP and the
MNLF, will take charge of each of the five items or clusters. They
will submit their "progress reports by January 10" four days before
the next Tripartite Meeting on January 14, 2008.

Too Big a Bite

Noble may be their intentions, the participants in the Tripartite
Meeting are, very obviously, taking a bite far, far too big for them
to chew.  Are they honestly serious?

The five working groups correspond, cluster by cluster, to the five
support committees that fleshed out the Tripoli Agreement of 1976 into
the 1996 FPA. The GRP and MNLF had separate support committees headed
by their top men.  The GRP support committees were chaired by cabinet
undersecretaries. The MNLF tapped Muslims in government for their
committees.  (Kalinaw Mindanao, B.R. Rodil, pp. 109 ff)

Presumably, the first task of the working groups will be to identify
provisions of RA 9054 and of the FPA that are (1) identical, (2)
similar, (3) complementary, (4) supplementary, and (5) entirely
different.  They will also pick out provisions of the FPA omitted from
RA 9054 and amendatory provisions in RA 9054 not provided in the FPA.

After making the provision-to-provision comparison, it is expected
that the joint working groups will have comments and recommendations
for discussions in the Tripartite Committee. These demands from the
working group-members a high level of competence since their inputs
will be the bases of sensitive, far-reaching policy discussions.

Each of the GRP and MNLF delegations has 15 members.  The GRP
delegates were named in MindaNews report (November 9).  How competent
are the GRP delegates? The same may be asked of the MNLF delegates,
although they were not all named in the newspaper report.

The comments and recommendations of the working groups imply the
taking of positions by their members. But the groups are jointly
composed of GRP-MNLF members. What will happen if members have – as
it
most probably will -- contrary positions?  In the Jakarta negotiation,
the support committees separately formulated positions for the GRP and
the MNLF panels.

Can the working groups accomplish their task in 60 days including
holidays and Sundays?  It took the support committees and the GRP and
MNLF panels more than three years to craft the FPA and a little longer
for Congress to enact RA 9054.

Simple Approach

Ihsanoglu and Jenie stated a simple approach: Focus on the assessment
of the implementation process, defining the obstacles and devising
solutions. Exchange general observations and from that gather all the
issues covering its progress as well as it obstacles. While unstated,
it is implied that by this process, the problems will be resolved
through consensus.

The MNLF has a set of complaints and the OIC has the findings of its
Fact-Finding Mission. Why not focus on these using the "OIC Matrix"
for the "Review of Peace Agreement Implementation"? (See: Kalinaw
Mindanaw, B.R. Rodil, pp. 206 ff)

Adopting the OIC Matrix, (1) those complaints and findings should be
stated; (2) the GRP and MNLF panels make their respective positions;
(3) a Tripartite Arbitration Committee, by consensus, resolves the
problems.

Former President Fidel V. Ramos, father of the 1996 FPA, put it very
simply: If the problem is RA 9054, the law that the MNLF claims did
not follow the peace agreement, the solution is to amend the law
(MindaNews, Sept. 3, 2006).

And there is no need for the five joint working groups to compare the
1996 FPA and RA 9054. The MNLF has already itemized the alleged
errors, has submitted these to the OIC and as noted by Ramos
(MindaNews, Sept. 2, 2006), the MNLF raised the issue at the recent
(June 19-21, 2006) Baku, Asserbaijan meeting of the Organization of
Islamic Countries.

It follows that if the problem concerns RA 9054, the Tripartite
Committee recommends its amendment by Congress; if it is
non-compliance of agreed financial assistance, the Committee
recommends compliance by the Government of the Philippines or by the
OIC; and so on depending on the problems. In their political and
economic complaints, the MNLF may be as remiss in doing their part as
the GRP.

The review is being made complicated – ignoring the simple
Ihsanoglu-Jenie formula which is adaptable to the already tested OIC
Matrix, used pursuant to Section 12 of the 1996 FPA. (See: Footnote)
The five joint- working-group approach can lead to problems that will
delay – or even circumvent -- the resolutions of the MNLF complaints
well into – or even beyond – 2008.

Note well: The five joint working groups are tasked principally to
review how the Agreement was legislated into RA 9054. New problems may
surface. How the specific complaints of the MNLF and the findings of
the OIC Fact-Finding Mission will tackled is not clear.

***  ***  ***

NOTE:  Section 12 states: "The OIC shall be requested to continue to
extend its assistance and good offices in monitoring the full
implementation of this agreement during the transitional period until
the regular autonomous government is firmly established …."
If this provision is strictly followed, the OIC has no more right to
monitor the implementation of the 1996 FPA. After the ratification of
RA 9054 and the first regional election under the new Organic Act,
"the regular autonomous government" was deemed "firmly established".
The MILF complaints are internal problems of the country.

In reality, the Arroyo government – to jealously protect national
sovereignty -- should have just formed a body to review the
implementation of the 1996 FPA.  The MNLF, through the ARMM Regional
Assembly, could have RA 9054 amended to remedy errors relative to the
1996 FPA and submit the amendments to Congress, as provided in Article
XVII, Section 2 of RA 9050.

("Comment" is Mr. Patricio P. Diaz' column for MindaViews, the opinion
section of MindaNews. The Titus Brandsma Media Awards recently honored
Mr. Diaz with a "Lifetime Achievement Award" for his "commitment to
education and public information to Mindanawons as Journalist,
Educator and Peace Advocate." You can reach him at
patpdiazgsc@yahoo.com.)