Peace deal annex signed

The Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front signed Wednesday night in Kuala Lumpur the first of four annexes to the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

The Annex on Transitional Arrangements and Modalities (TAM) “details the road map towards the creation of the Bangsamoro” region.

According to their joint statement, the parties also signed the Terms of Reference for the Independent Commission on Policing (ICP). The ICP will submit recommendations to the peace panels on the appropriate form, structures and relationships of the police force for the Bangsamoro.

Both panels likewise continued discussions on the Annexes on Wealth-sharing and Power-sharing and resolved most of the remaining issues. Also discussed was the composition of the Third Party Monitoring Team that will review, assess, evaluate and monitor the implementation of the FAB and its Annexes.

The Technical Working Group on Normalization meanwhile  continued discussions on the Normalization Annex and took charge of refining the TOR on the policing review body that was drafted by Kristian Herbolzheimer, who sits in the International Contact Group.

Miriam Colonel-Ferrer, GPH panel chair, expressed her satisfaction on the results of the recent round of talks. “This has been a very fruitful round, a very happy one, with the signing of the Annex on Transitional Arrangements and Modalities. We actually had a draft as early as December and finally now we are signing it. Resolutions of issues on wealth-sharing also took a long time but here we are - they’ve been solved, we found the language.”

Transition Commission

Both sides welcomed the appointment of the members of the Transition Commission (TransCom) who will draft the Bangsamoro Basic Law that will be certified urgent by the President and passed by Congress before undergoing a plebiscite in the envisioned core territory of the Bangsamoro region. Once ratified, Bangsamoro will replace  the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

“Certainly, we wish the members of the Transition Commission  the strength and the wisdom to be able to carry out the functions that they will assume in the TransCom. We will always be here to support your work,” Coronel-Ferrer said.

Iqbal, who has been appointed to the TransCom, said the group has only one year and 10 months to fulfill its task.

Near the finish line

The panel chair said “not giving up” and “giving” brought the two parties this far.

On the other hand, Iqbal said challenging tasks remain.  “I would like to invite everybody – our counterparts. Counterparts from government, my colleagues in MILF panel to look at the forest rather than at the trees because if we look at the larger picture and we focus on that, I think we would be able to surpass all obstacles along the way.”

Both parties also thanked President Aquino for his commitment to peace, and Malaysian Prime Minister Dato' Sri Mohd Najib Bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak for the  facilitation of the GPH-MILF peace talks. They also thanked the members of the ICG, namely Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Kingdom, CHD, Conciliation Resources, Muhammadiyah and The Asia Foundation.