President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino has formed a committee to advise the government panel when it resumes peace talks with the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a Malacanang official disclosed on Sunday.
Secretary Teresita Deles, the presidential adviser on the peace process, said the committee was established to ensure transparency and accountability in the talks expected to resume either in late September or early October.
Deles also said Aquino directed the committee to help a separate government panel in its negotiations with the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing the New People’s Army.
In addition, the President is to sign a memorandum containing the guidelines that will set the parameters, mandate and responsibilities of the advisory panel, Deles said.
According to Deles, the committee is composed of members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, retired justices of the Supreme Court, members of the 1987 Constitutional Convention, local government officials in the strife-affected areas, representatives of non-government organizations and former chairmen of the government peace panels.
She disclosed she already met with House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte and Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile to ask them to designate their representatives to the committee.
In preparation to the resumption, President Aquino appointed Marvic Leonen, an expert on ancestral domain and the dean of the College of Law of the state-owned University of the Philippines as the chairman of the government panel.
Both the government and the MILF have agreed to retain Malaysia as the broker or facilitator in the resumption of the peace talks to be hosted in its capital of Kuala Lumpur.
A Malaysian military general also heads an international team monitoring the ceasefire agreement between the government and the MILF while their representatives are talking peace in Kuala Lumpur.
Earlier, President Aquino announced that the government was willing to resume talks with the MILF after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on September 10.
However, Mohagher Iqbal, the head of the MILF panel, doubted the talks could be resumed immediately, saying that Malaysia would hold a week-long celebration of the Eid’l Fitr which marks the end of Ramadan.
In this light, Iqbal said negotiations could start either in late September or early October.
The talks collapsed in 2008 when the Philippine Supreme Court declared as illegal a draft agreement that called for the establishment of an expanded Moro homeland in Mindanao under the concept of ancestral domain.
In its decision issued on the eve of its signing in Kuala Lumpur, the High Court ruled the agreement violated the Constitution because it meant the establishment of a state within a sovereign state.
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