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Friday, March 29, 2024

Truth time

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It’s now plain that Moro Islamic Liberation Front chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal – we shall refer to him by that name simply because we are so used to it by now – has been refusing to divulge his true identity for one simple reason: To hide his involvement in terroristic activities in the past.

We are referring to the Davao International Airport bombing of March 4, 2003, where 20 people died and 143 were injured, and the bombing of the Sasa Wharf, also in Davao City, less than a month later on April 2, 2003, where 17 were killed and 56 were wounded.

Iqbal is not the only leader of the MILF, which the government is now talking peace with, similarly situated. The Public Attorney’s Office, the source of Iqbal’s alleged real name, also has records implicating Al Hadz Ibrahim Salamat, Aleeem Aziz Mimbantas, Ghadazli Jaafar and Eid Kabalu in the Davao bombings, as well. PAO chief Persida Acosta, according to Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, has records of the real names of these MILF officials because she acted as their lawyer after they were charged with masterminding the attacks.

And there is a good reason why Iqbal’s counterparts on the government side of the negotiations, Peace Process Secretary Teresita Deles and panel chairman Miriam Coronel Ferrer, did their best to keep their identities a secret. Because the government negotiators want us all to believe that the MILF’s leaders and members are not terrorists, they cannot by necessity allow the people on the other side to be implicated in terroristic activities.

By their actions in the controversy about Iqbal’s use of an alias, Deles, Ferrer and the other members of the panel have conspired to keep away information that they unilaterally decided was unimportant. But as Cayetano has also pointed out, the significance of the use of aliases by Iqbal and the rest strikes at the very heart of the negotiations with the rebel group: The need for mutual trust between the two sides.

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If Deles and Ferrer can, in their desire to hammer out an agreement with the MILF, choose to gloss over inconvenient facts, how can we, in whose name they are negotiating, trust them, in turn, to work for our interest?

The government panel has not been forthright in its disclosures to the public, which has become wary of the real motives of the MILF after the Mamasapano incident. For their own protection (from legal action, really), Iqbal and the MILF leadership have decided to enlist the government panel in a scheme that allowed them to pretend that they were never involved in terrorist acts.

And that’s where we are right now: Instead of trust, we have suspicion. Where there should be transparency, there is only a perpetual cloud of doubt over the peace talks and the proposal to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law.

Let everyone involved give the people all the facts. Then let them participate in a negotiation that impacts them all.

Enough of the lies and omissions. Let’s have some truth, for a change, before we can have peace.

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