Let's hope optimism lasts on GRP-NDFP peace talks

Recently I wrote in this space about the Aquino government’s blunders that unwarrantedly doused the optimism it had generated over the resumption of peace talks, both with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).

Now, cheered on by the approach of Christmas and the New Year, that optimism has been rekindled.

On Dec. 1-2, in preliminary informal meetings in Hong Kong, the respective negotiating panel heads of the GRP, Alexander Padilla, and of the NDFP, Luis Jalandoni, agreed to resume formal talks next February, at winter’s end in Oslo, Norway. Also present were Pablito Sanidad, GRP panel member, Coni Ledesma, NDFP panel member, and Rachel Pastores of the Public Interest Law Center, NDFP legal consultant on the peace process. 

The good news eclipsed that of the GRP-MILF peace talks, which were to have resumed in late September but got hobbled by a disagreement over Malaysian facilitation.

Coincidentally, on Dec. 2, GRP panel chair Marvic Leonen went to Kuala Lumpur to deliver two letters: President Aquino’s reply to Prime Minister Razak’s letter expressing Malaysia’s continuing interest to facilitate the negotiations, and his own invitation to MILF panel chair Mohagher Iqbal to hold exploratory talks this month. There has been no response so far.

The formal GRP-NDFP talks are tentatively set on Feb. 19-25. The dates will be confirmed after further consultations on both sides and affirmation by the Royal Norwegian Government, the third-party facilitator, through Ambassador Ture Lundh. In the past months, Lundh has shuttled between Utrecht, the Netherlands (where the NDFP panel holds office) and Manila, endeavoring to spur the resumption of the talks.

Padilla and Jalandoni also agreed to hold preliminary talks in Oslo on Jan. 14-18. That is a good move. The meetings will enable members of the two panels to know each other better and to iron out kinks in preparation for the formal negotiations. 

The talks have been in an impasse since Gloria Arroyo suspended them in August 2004. Altogether, 15 suspensions have disrupted the formal talks since they began under the Ramos administration. The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 set the basic framework for the peace process, which has produced two substantive agreements (the JASIG and CARHRIHL) and eight procedural and supplemental agreements under Ramos’s watch, plus two joint statements under Arroyo’s.

This being the second Aquino administration, it’s worth reckoning that it was President Cory Aquino who initiated the peace talks with the Left revolutionary movement in 1986. What drew the NDFP to respond positively was her declared intent to seek an end to the armed conflict by addressing its root causes. That didn’t happen. The talks collapsed after seven months and never resumed for the rest of her term.

Now her son has declared: “We must revive the peace process on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of the root causes of the conflict, under clear policies that pave the way ahead, and driven by a genuine desire to attain a just and lasting peace.”

Padilla believes President Aquino is committed to achieve peace within his six-year term. He is even optimistic that final agreement may be attained in three years of earnest negotiations. “If Ireland did it in three years, why can’t we?” Padilla told peace advocates last Wednesday.

The test will be in the February formal talks. Will the President’s commitment be backed up by “clear policies” based on a “comprehensive understanding of the root causes of the conflict”? If yes, the optimism can be sustained. If not, the talks will likely not progress.

In another aspect, the son has followed after his mother. He has chosen Padilla and Sanidad as negotiators, probably for the same reason that she chose Sen. Jose W. Diokno as her first chief negotiator: all were human rights lawyers who had worked with and related well with Left political activists.

As the NDFP chief negotiator in the 1986-87 peace talks, I welcomed Sen. Diokno’s designation as my counterpart. He was my lawyer in the failed seven-year trial of a rebellion case before a special military commission. Diokno and I immediately agreed to first address human rights violations and the dismantling of paramilitary units, the CAFGU. Unfortunately, cancer prevented him from pursuing these goals.

When Juan Ponce Enrile, then defense secretary, and Ramos, AFP chief, vehemently opposed the peace talks, Diokno advised me to request a private one-on-one meeting with President Cory. I did, but got no answer. I remember what Diokno said when I informed him: “Maybe,” he smiled wryly, “she doesn’t know what to say to you.”    

The sole output of the 1986-87 peace talks was a 60-day nationwide ceasefire agreement insisted on by the President. The formal talks could not take off; first, for lack of a substantive GRP response to the NDFP’s comprehensive peace agenda; second, complaints of violations of the ceasefire agreement distracted the two panels.

Those talks collapsed consequent to the Mendiola massacre of peasants rallying for agrarian reform on January 22, 1987.