Philippines south stresses hope for peace under Duterte

By Hader Glang

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines (AA) - Stakeholders in the Philippines’ predominantly Muslim south on Monday underlined their hopes for peace under President Rodrigo Duterte.

In a joint statement, leaders of the Miriam College-Women and Gender Institute, the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy and the Center for Legislative Development backed Duterte's overtures to rebel factions.

“[Duterte] has reopened and restarted the peace negotiations with the left,” Aurora De Dios, executive director of the college, said. “He also offered vital cabinet positions to the left and appointed persons for negotiations.”

De Dios was referring to renewed peace negotiations with the communist National Democratic Front of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army.

Civil society members including those from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao gathered earlier to discuss the peace process under Duterte’s recently installed government.

De Dios welcomed Duterte’s policy of seeking a federalist system amid dialogue with the country’s former rebel groups the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

In 2014, the MILF and the government signed a peace deal that would have been sealed by a proposed law to replace the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a more inclusive Bangsamoro autonomous region.

However, the Bangsamoro Basic Law stalled as Congress adjourned for campaigning for the May 9 polls.

The MNLF signed its own agreement with the government in 1996.

Both groups recently released a joint statement vowing to “come together with a unified action to work at common goals and objectives to engage with the new Philippine administration”.

They have also been recently been asked by authorities to assist the government’s campaign against illegal drugs.

Amina Rasul, president of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy, said residents in the autonomous region should be willing to embrace Duterte’s peace overtures.

“It says in the Quran that God will only change the condition of man if man makes changes for himself,” Rasul said. “This means we also need to have attitudinal change within ourselves.”