Professor Miriam Coronel-Ferrer is a senior Filipino peace negotiator, among many other achievements. She signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2014 on behalf of the Philippines Government. She is the first female government chief negotiator in the world to sign a final peace accord with a rebel group.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was created in 1981 after a 24-year guerrilla war against the Philippine government to achieve an independent Islamic state in Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
Under the Bangsamoro Agreement, the MILF agreed to abandon its armed struggle for independence and the Government committed to self-government for the Bangsamoro. The Agreement’s procedural strengths included women’s leadership, an International Contact Group, multi-level engagement and the participation of a range of civil society actors.
But more than decade on, Professor Coronel-Ferrer is concerned the Agreement ‘is in danger of drifting and deterioration’. She spoke with Melbourne Asia Review’s Managing Editor, Cathy Harper.
What are your main concerns about the Bangsamoro peace process in its current state?
It’s been stalled. In particular, elections have been postponed several times. The government has gone off track over the last few years when they started to do things unilaterally. For example, a few years ago they disbanded the International Monitoring Team that accompanies the ceasefire mechanisms of the government and the MILF. Secondly, they moved to replace the chief minister with another person who was not selected by the Central Committee of the MILF. It creates a lot of questions if the government is not sticking to the implementation mechanisms and components that have been well-defined in the Agreement.
That’s why the MILF suspended the decommissioning of weapons and combatants. They suspended that specific aspect on the grounds that many of the benefits that are supposed to accrue to the already decommissioned 26,000 combatants have not been fully delivered. The decommissioning of the final 12,000 has not been able to move ahead over the last two years. But this year, some steps have been taken to be able to recover some of the lost trust in the process: through the appointment of a new Peace Advisor, who was also appointed as the Implementing Panel Chair. For a long time, there was no government Panel Chair in charge of implementing the Agreement along with the MILF counterpart. It took the government quite a long time to realise that there was a problem and to act on it.
Is the government deliberately changing the terms of how the Agreement should progress? Is it withdrawing from the Agreement in a way?
It’s not, but the government is made up of different actors and the President really relied on his lieutenants to implement the Agreement. The lieutenants are doing their own thing and convincing the President of the way to go. For example, the new Chief Minister and the other members of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority are not compliant with the specifics of both the Bangsamoro Organic Law that was passed after the Agreement and the Agreement itself.
In a way, the problem was that lieutenants were dovetailing the direction of the peace process towards certain ends. Political interests have come into play because of the impending elections for the Bangsamoro. What we have seen over the last year, for example, is that the ruling party, the party of the President, created a regional party in the Bangsamoro that will be competing in the election, and this party raided the membership of the MILF political party, called the United Bangsamoro Justice Party. All this partisan politics is happening with the ruling party trying to set up its own clout but getting the bulk of its members from the party of the MILF.
The MILF also has its weaknesses. For example, they made a lot of mistakes in terms of implementing good governance. But what has become problematic is the wedge that has been driven among the members of the MILF through appointments that the government is doing that are detrimental to the MILF and not in consultation with it.
Do you think the Agreement is unravelling?
No, because the MILF has not gone back to war and has said it is still committed to the Agreement. But they need clear signals and clear action on the part of the government that it is equally committed. MILF has been telling their members not to use violence and also to participate in the election. The peace process is still there because the aggrieved party has not taken it upon themselves to leave the Agreement and go back to war. That’s a very good thing and I think it should be appreciated. The MILF is a signatory to the Agreement that really wants peace. Also, they can still command the bulk of their membership. Even though they lost some commanders and political members to the government-backed party, they still basically have a functional central committee that undertakes collective decision making and it’s been quite mature and prudent in how to address this kind of situation.
A hot-headed armed group that remains armed would have a knee-jerk reaction to seeing all of these manoeuvres happening and just say ‘we’re going back to war’. But MILF has endured being sidelined by a process that has focused on just the BARMM (the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) government as the entity that is now under government-selected leadership and not really bringing the MILF, the partner to the Agreement, into the locus of activities.
In short, the government has been using the BARMM government, which is under the leadership of its chosen appointee, against the MILF, as the main implementing partner. Under the BARMM, the MILF should be there as the main implementing party for significant aspects of the Agreement, many of which have been basically non-functional.
What are the main successes of the Agreement so far?
The governance arrangement encourages a multi-party parliamentary system that allows for pluralism – we see that in the 12-13 political parties that have been accredited by COMELEC (the Commission on Elections). Another good aspect is that the regional transitional parliament produced an electoral code that has very good elements, notably, an anti-dynasty provision, although still quite liberal. It has stricter rules on party switching and ‘turncoatism’ and in that sense it’s better than the national law on elections. It also has a quota system for women, although it’s not properly implemented by the political parties because most of the women are placed way down the list, which means that a lot more men will get the party seats. Non-Moro Indigenous communities are allocated two seats, one for a man and one for a woman, which means that there is 50 percent representation of women, even though two is a small number out of the 80-member Bangsamoro be held by Parliament, but there is also one other allocated seat for women elected at large.
On the fiscal side, they were provided with quite a large amount of money through Annual Block Grants. I feel it was too much because they have had poor capacity to be able to utilise it, but it’s there. Part of the reform was not to make them dependent on the goodwill of National Congress or the President to get that kind of regular budget. It’s a fixed percentage amount that’s provided in law.
On the peace and security component, I think it’s still a good thing that there hasn’t been a major war, except for what happened in Marawi City in 2017 which was a product of hostilities between the government and violent extremist groups who had the city under siege for five months. But the biggest, most organised group in this region, the MILF, was not involved. There have been some incidents, notably localised resource and political conflicts, but you don’t see large scale displacements (other than in Marawi) since 2014 when the Agreement was signed. There has been some displacement, but it was temporary and of smaller scale.
The other good thing is that the young generation are motivated to work for peace and not to fight a war. They do that by getting involved. A significant number of young professionals were absorbed into the regional government and the different agencies that were created. There are a lot more NGOs now, including women’s groups – not enough, but a lot more than existed before the Agreement. They see the Agreement as something that will not bring total peace, but something that has to be preserved because it offers a better outcome and it has created a situation where people can organise, people can leave normal lives, they can have ambitions for a career and so on.
There are not enough jobs for everyone, but the hope is there, and that’s why people care about what’s happening. All the political parties competing in the election on September 14 frame their participation with reference to being able to sustain the gains of the peace process. How people feel about it may be uneven. Some people certainly got more of the peace dividends than others. Others might feel that they haven’t got enough. But generally it’s something that people think is good and they want to preserve it.
How significant do you think this particular peace process and its structures are in terms of creating these positive outcomes that you talk about?
I think the Agreement is comprehensive and there have been very few comprehensive agreements in the past 10-15 years. It does not cover everything because a peace agreement cannot solve all problems, but it provides for how to implement and what to implement. And the ‘how’ part of it is reflected in the mechanisms that have been created, including the creation of the Bangsamoro government, the transition authority. If the mechanisms have not been working well, that’s when people start to worry, because the mechanisms are supposed to deliver the different elements of the Agreement such as power sharing and wealth sharing.
Different government bodies have been created but they still need strengthening. There’s unevenness – some ministries are working better than others. There’s a lack of real managerial and administrative skill. There is also nepotism, which in a way is cultural, not only for the Bangsamoro, but almost in the whole country where a lot of people appointed are relatives of these influential new elites. There’s competition with the old political clans that were displaced by the fact that the MILF is there, but there’s also cooperation among them knowing that they have to play by the new rules of the game. The governance part is all there and it’s in the law that was passed in 2018 and 2019. But a lot more checks and civil society monitoring would be needed to stop rent-seeking and all the other predatory behaviour of the political class. This is true in the whole country and true for the Bangsamoro in particular because of the large block grant that it gets.
Then there are all the socio-economic components. Transitional justice hasn’t moved far. There’s the decommissioning of weapons and combatants which has been suspended precisely as MILF leveraged against the government’s manoeuvres. There is the Inter-Cabinet Cluster Committee charged with ensuring program delivery because when you decommission the combatants, you need to follow through. You need a basic database to be able to trace where they are, where you should deliver the benefits that are supposed to accrue to them, which includes livelihood training and other socio-economic support.
So, a lot is demanded on the part of government to have the infrastructure that is inter-agency, inter-departmental. It must have a budget because most of these elements are going to be financed by government. Of course, the international community is there. They’re financing some aspects of development and some operational aspects when it comes to some of the mechanisms. But the delivery of the socio-economic transformation, not only of the combatants but of the communities, is a national government job in co-operation with the MILF and the regional government. If the national government doesn’t have its focus on this coming from the President, so all the agencies give it top priority, then it will be slow in being able to deliver and implement.
Do you think things could have been done better and whether those changes can still be made?
If there’s something wrong with the Agreement, you can always renegotiate it. If you think you need to modify some parts, if you have the trust and confidence of each other, if you have the goodwill, then you can always negotiate. The Agreement wasn’t written in stone, although it’s written on paper and therefore there’s that commitment. But as you go along, you can change the terms. But if you are not talking and if there is nobody assigned to do that job, it is difficult. For example, during the period when there was no Chair of the government implementing panel, then obviously they were not talking and they were not talking for several months.
Implementation could have been done faster. We’ve had shifts in presidency. Since we signed the Agreement, there have been two other Presidents – the previous and the present one. They never had a policy of scuttling the Agreement, in fact they said they support it and want to implement it, but they had other priorities. For example, President Duterte’s campaign was to shift to a federal system, which would have made the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region irrelevant. The MILF said they didn’t want to shift to a federal system. Eventually they passed the Bangsamoro law. It ended up being done the way the Agreement said it should be done, but there was a four-year delay – that’s how long it took to pass the law from signing the Agreement with a change in presidency in-between. Then there was COVID. The first election was supposed to elect the non-transitory government of the Bangsamoro in 2025 but it was suspended. Since then, the elections have been postponed twice.
Despite the problems, it’s encouraging to be talking about a peace process. How can other peace processes in Asia and elsewhere better reduce the drivers of conflict and address structural inequality and promote sustainable peace?
A lot of the conflicts are interstate conflicts and it’s very tragic that we are seeing two major interstate conflicts that have cost human lives and caused significant damage. Domestic conflicts demand the reorganisation of the structure of governance, even the structure of the state. The Bangsamoro Agreement, the peace process, and its ceasefire mechanisms, offer ideas on what can go into a political process, a peace agreement, and how a ceasefire can be strengthened and accompany the political process. And then all the elements, all the discussions about the devolution of powers, from transportation to communications, to natural resources, are talking points in the rearrangement of subnational and national relationships. In that sense, it can inform others, just as we learned from earlier processes and other national and subnational arrangements around the world. They provided us with ideas and some creative thinking on the principles that we can apply.
Basically, we are an addition to a body of knowledge and experience that can inform those who are still struggling with how to make the relationship between the state and its parts more democratic and just, and also to have some acknowledgement of historical injustices. Ultimately, it’s the political will of state leaders as well as those of the leaders of non-state armed groups that will really make these things possible.
Do you have advice for people working on peacemaking in Myanmar, for example, or Afghanistan, in terms of how to build the context for political leaders to come to some kind of agreement?
Myanmar and Afghanistan are very different contexts. What kind of a peace process is expected in Afghanistan? There is definitely need for civil society to engage the Taliban, which is the de facto government. There’s need to push for reform and that’s not necessarily just around the table. It can be multiple forms of dialogue or even other action. In Myanmar, it’s too early to talk about political negotiations with a junta that is basically intent on being able to stay in power and using state brutality to be able to stay in power and committing severe violations of international law. What we’re seeing in Myanmar is a political process, dialogues, among the different actors and other stakeholders that are trying to envision a future for their country. That’s very important because it’s not just about power sharing, for example, which is what the military probably will be open to in the vein of what it did before the coup d’état. But the stakeholders want something different and that process has to be worked through among themselves so they will be in a good position to come forward and advance some kind of real transformation.
There are other countries that are probably more directly relevant to our case. For example, you have the situation in southern Thailand or in Turkey, where there is the Kurdish issue, or parts of India, parts of Pakistan. In Africa, there are subnational entities that are trying to redefine their relationship with the national state. That’s where the Bangsamoro experience can be relevant. But in terms of general principles of mediation or of negotiation, there are principles that are important in any type of conflict – to be able to participate in dialogue processes and get some resolution.
Let’s not break the hearts of the Bangsamoro people. Let’s all do our part. I think that’s why many of us are again organising to be able to push this process to its fruition. I am very happy that there are actually many groups, both national as well as regional, that are still accompanying this process and share in that goal. It’s an ugly world that we’re in.
Our example in relation to how an armed group was convinced to observe international law and how the state has also progressed in terms of reaffirming commitment to the rule of law and international law – these values and norms remain at the heart, at the foundation, of any process that seeks a just resolution. That should be very much part of the discourse and not be lost to the war mongering and arms race that’s going on.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Image: Voters in Marantao, Bangsamoro, gather outside a polling precinct 2019. Credit: Nef Luczon for the Philippine News Agency/WikiCommons.
