Peace Deal to End Insurgency Came After Philippine Leader’s Ultimatum to Rebels - NYTimes.comPeace Deal to End Insurgency Came After Philippine Leader’s Ultimatum to Rebels - NYTimes.com






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Asia Pacific 
Peace Deal to End Insurgency Came After Philippine Leader’s Ultimatum to Rebels

By FLOYD WHALEYJAN. 26, 2014
 
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MANILA —  After repeated frustrations in its efforts to end a long-running insurgency in the southern Philippines, the government had a message for rebels: now or never. It was an argument, analysts say, that helped President Benigno S. Aquino III finally reach a landmark peace deal over the weekend with the country’s largest Muslim rebel group.Mr. Aquino made it clear to the rebels that he could deliver congressional approval for a peace deal, but only if it were struck before he left office in 2016, said Noel Ruiz, a post-conflict development specialist for international agencies who maintains close ties to the rebel group that signed the accord, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.“After he was out of office, they were on their own to try to strike a deal with the next administration and get it through Congress,” Mr. Ruiz said. “The administration created a sense of urgency.” 

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Philippines and Rebels Agree on Peace Accord to End InsurgencyJAN. 25, 2014







Mr. Aquino’s party controls both houses of the Philippine legislature, which will be called on to ratify the final agreement, Mr. Ruiz said. The case presented by the president was also strengthened by the support of foreign powers, his popularity and political skills, and his desire for a deal.“He listened to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and he was willing to compromise,” Mr. Ruiz said.The deal announced Saturday raised hopes for peace in the southern island of Mindanao, where decades of war have killed more than 100,000 people, displaced millions and left a resource-rich region mired in grinding poverty and violence.Many Muslims in the southern Philippines say that the central government, based in the north and largely run by Christians, has oppressed them and exploited their resources. Muslim rebel groups have flourished in the area for more than a century, and every Philippine government since the country became independent in 1946 has struggled to bring peace to Mindanao through negotiations or force.In October 2012, Mr. Aquino announced that the government had reached a framework agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In the months since the announcement, negotiators have been working out the details.The deal includes an agreement to create a majority-Muslim autonomous region with broad local powers. Other provisions call for handing the region a large share of the revenue from its wealth of natural resources and carrying out the gradual disarming of rebel fighters and their assimilation into the government forces.In his efforts to reach an accord, Mr. Aquino learned from the mistakes of the past. His predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, negotiated a peace deal with the same group in 2008 but the agreement required an amendment to the Constitution, a complicated process.The political opponents of Mrs. Arroyo, who faced accusations of corruption during much of her time in office, feared that she would use the constitutional amendment process to remove a provision on term limits and extend her time in office.“Arroyo failed because she wasn’t trusted to open up the Constitution for amendment,” Mr. Ruiz said.Continue reading the main story
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Mr. Aquino told his negotiators that the peace deal had to be compatible with the current Constitution, which greatly simplified the process.Reynald Trillana, the executive director of the Philippine Center for Civic Education and Democracy, agreed that it was the public’s trust in Mr. Aquino, and his willingness to use the levers of government and spend his political capital, that helped clinch the deal.“There are still land mines,” Mr. Trillana said. “He will be required to use more of that political capital in order to shepherd this agreement through Congress and into law.” The government is able to hand out some money for projects favored by lawmakers, and Mr. Aquino can count on popular support when he presses legislators to back his agenda.The deal also came about because the Moro Islamic Liberation Front learned the lessons of previous failed peace deals and demonstrated to the government that it was willing to compromise, said Patricio Abinales, an Asian studies professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.Another rebel group, the Moro National Liberation Front, that reached a peace deal with the government in 1996 failed in its efforts to administer a similar autonomous region in Mindanao, Mr. Abinales said. Plagued by corruption and factional fighting among members of the rebel group, the region remains poor and violent more than 15 years after that deal was reached.The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which signed the most recent deal, will send some of its members into government-sponsored training programs, Dr. Abinales said, to teach them to avoid similar problems.Foreign governments, with the encouragement of the Aquino administration, also were critical in bringing the deal to fruition, analysts said. The Malaysian government brokered the deal, and several countries, including the United States and Canada, as well as the European Union, assured both sides that international aid would pour into the newly formed autonomous region.Joseph Estrada, president of the Philippines from 1998 until he was removed from office amid corruption allegations in 2001, said recently that Mr. Aquino’s efforts to make peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front would fail in the long term. During his administration, Mr. Estrada accused the rebel group of trying to dismember the country and refused to talk peace.Mr. Estrada said he “started an all-out war” against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. “Sometimes you have to wage war to earn peace. You have to show them that there is only one flag, one armed forces of the Philippines, one government. If I wasn’t unseated, I would have finished off that secessionist movement.”


A version of this article appears in print on January 27, 2014, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Peace Deal to End Insurgency Came After Philippine Leader’s Ultimatum to Rebels.  Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe









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