Moving to next phase of BARMM normalization track “difficult”: Ferrer
By Jaspearl Tan
A former peace negotiator, who led the talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said Monday that moving to the next phase of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) would be “difficult” because of the limited time.
Miriam Colonel-Ferrer, one of the 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees, said this at a virtual Zoom press conference Monday.
“Going on to phase three, it’s the most difficult phase because there is a lot of backlog. There is still the issue of how to push it to the last phase in a very limited time. And I think the time frame being discussed is 2025. Unless again, that is moved, which is probably not something that the current President would concede,” Ferrer said.
“So trying to squeeze that in the next few months, it’s about 30,000 plus combatants, and you still have about 35 percent for the next phase, then it’s going to be difficult. But if all parties are able to talk this out well, with all the existing mechanisms that have been established, the mechanisms are there but they have to deliver,” she added.
The Bangsamoro normalization track or the peace process seeks to de-commission around 40,000 MILF fighters and make sure they integrate back into civilian life peacefully.
Ferrer, who served as the peace negotiation panel chair during the term of Benigno Aquino III, said the talks became successful because of the political leadership at that time.
She said Aquino, tried to “understand the whole context” of the situation and used his “political capital”.
“This was not a popular initiative. A lot of critics from all over, even in mass media, social media was particularly vicious, especially every time you have incidents of violence. This is really talking about the Mamasapano (incident) which really delayed the whole process of implementing the peace agreement,” Ferrer said.
“Even in 2012, after President Aquino met with ( MILF leader Al-Haj) Murad in Japan, which was a breakthrough and not many commentators saw that as a positive thing when in fact, it was a breakthrough in the whole process,” she said.
Ferrer said that Aquino had pushed through with the negotiations despite the calls of people to go back to waging war against the MILF because of a violent incident that happened in Basilan.
“We had this major disaster in Basilan but what the President chose to do at that time was to investigate the process and saw some lapses in the operations conducted by the military. And then the MILF also investigated their own ranks and what they found, what eventually ended (up happening) was some disciplinary action on both sides. Commanders of the MILF and the colonel who led the operations in Basilan at that time,” Ferrer said.
“The president stood steadfast and defended the whole process. And that’s very, very important,'' she said.
Ferrer said that in conducting negotiations, one must have “empathy” and form “creative solutions”.
“If you hate the other party, it shows and they will hate you back. So that already is an emotional barrier in the whole process. But showing respect and also having the perspective that any agreement must be based on justice and dignity for all concerned, then I think if that framework is not there then there’s sort of like a closed-arms in the whole negotiation process. But there are also other basic techniques in negotiations, multiple avenues, different formats , and informal and informal processes, these all combined together really create a good atmosphere,” she explained.
“Other insights have to do with the need for creative solutions because you need creativity, you need good language engineering as has been referred to in the past. Because an agreement is a text. And you need to find the right words. You need to put it in a way that it does not create doubt or fear on any of your stakeholders, including of course the other party. So it’s a lot of creativity and a lot of this finding solutions and finding the right words for it,” Ferrer said. DMS
