Supreme Court stops homeland deal with MILF

abs-cbnnews.com ^ | 8/4/2008 7:35 PM | MANNY MOGATO

[Checkers]

MANILA - The Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on Monday halting a territorial deal between the government and Muslim separatists, the latest setback for peace in the nation's volatile south.

The agreement between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's largest Muslim rebel group, was set to be signed in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday after more than 10 years of stop-start talks.

The government, whose commitment to a permanent political solution for the south has sometimes been questioned, said it welcomed the court's move.

"I feel this is a relief," said Jesus Dureza, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's spokesman. "It's a good opportunity for some issues to be threshed out."

The deal was meant to formally re-open peace talks to end a near 40-year conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people, displaced 2 million, and kept the most resource-rich region of the country dirt poor.

Under the territorial agreement, an existing autonomous region for Muslims in the south of the largely Catholic country would be widened and they would get broad political and economic powers.

But the agreement's hasty conclusion on the eve of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's annual state speech last month and its generous provisions to the MILF on mineral wealth prompted some analysts to dismiss it as political window dressing.

"I think it was all teed up as a bone on the eve of Arroyo's state of the nation address. I think it was strictly done for that purpose," said Scott Harrison, managing director of risk consultancy Pacific Strategies and Assessments.

What next?

MILF officials, already in Malaysia for the signing ceremony, were dismayed at the Supreme Court move.

[ikka]

It is essentially the granting of land in lieu of secession. Does the President of the Philippines have such power?

[Checkers]

“Does the President of the Philippines have such power?”

Good question. Maybe someone knows the answer.

[bajabaja]

The president is relieved that an agreement she (her administration) negotiated is now “on hold”? She wanted it before but now does not? Islam is the religion of about 20 percent of Mindanao, if I am correctly informed. That translates into less political power than what this agreement seems to give. And the MILF’s goal is autonomy, not just a quasi-independent entity. (And MILF is not an obscenity, it is the acronym for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, an acronym of longstanding.) If this current agreement is put into place, it will only be a way station for the more radical Islamists, particularly in the western portion of Mindanao. Autonomy is the goal.