MNLF members attend forum on Bangsamoro entity

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines -- Former guerrillas of the Moro National Liberation Front in Ampatuan town  participated in a forum the other day on the Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro (FAB), the basis for a final peace deal between its rival Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government.

The FAB forum was held in Barangay Kauran, a duly recognized “peace and development community” by the government and MNLF, which are bound together by a now 18-year final peace agreement brokered by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The OIC, a bloc of more than 50 Muslim states, including wealthy petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa, helped broker the September 2, 1996 government-MNLF final peace pact.

Senior members of Ampatuan’s municipal peace and order council said no fewer than 200 women, either wives, or dependents of MNLF members, attended the forum and listened to speakers who explained the gains of the government-MILF peace talks, and the directions of the overture.

The MILF and the government, whose talks started January 7, 1997, aim to establish a Bangsamoro political entity to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao before the three-year term of incumbent ARMM officials ends on June 30, 2016.

The peace forum in Barangay Kauran was organized by the Kadtatabanga Foundation for Peace and Development Advocates, Inc., a non-government organization whose members include MNLF members.

One of the speakers in the forum, Rabie Angkal, a professor at the Cotabato City State Polytechnic College, told participants any final peace deal between the government and the MILF will never discriminate the MNLF.

He said it is important for all sectors to support the FAB, forged by the MILF and government on October 15, 2012 and will be the basis  to set up  a new Bangsamoro political entity. - John Unson