Mindanao: The Government's Carrot VS The MILF's Stick

Rushing to catch President Arroyo's State of the Nation Address this afternoon, Philippine government negotiators (according to late Sunday night news dispatches from Kuala Lumpur from both the Associated Press and Reuters) appear to have resuscitated the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Recently retired armed forces chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon, now the presidential adviser on the peace process announced that government negotiator Rodolfo Garcia signed an agreement with his Moro Islamic Liberation Front counterpart, Mohagher Iqbal, setting the signing early next month of a key accord on ancestral domain.

Earlier late last Friday, the MILF walked out of the peace talks after Manila reportedly hedged on the timetable in the wake of strongly negative reactions to the planned expansion of the autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao.

Now the news reports are saying the expanded ARMM will include 712 villages, subject to the agreement of residents in a plebiscite.

At the weekend, disturbing reports confirmed that MILF forces "went on a rampage in Cotabato, burning 10 houses, wounding three soldiers and causing scores of people to flee.

The military said the rebels "attacked Aleosan town in Cotabato on Saturday, setting fire to 10 houses and firing at the soldiers who rushed to the scene, wounding three of them. A military spokesman said "sporadic fighting raged for most of the day and soldiers were still in defensive positions yesterday."

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. warned the MILF yesterday that hostilities could break out if it fails to control its members.“It’s incumbent upon them … to rein in their people…to prevent the outbreak of hostilities,” Teodoro said.

The MILF decision to stage an attack in Cotabato clearly shows they will not hesitate to restart hostilities while the government has been pressured to flip its hand and offer the ancestral land 'carrot' to rescue the talks in time for the SONA.

These developments bear close scrutiny as the government may have blinked ahead of the August 11 ARMM election, which Manila has also offered to postpone.

The linkage of the postponement at this sensitive point in the government-MILF peace talks is clear.

The matter of expanding the ARMM without amending the organic la,w and the new commitment of an earlier time frame for the plebiscite introduce legal and political issues that government critics are certain to examine in detail in the coming days.

For now, government simply wants to make sure the 'hope for peace' component in GMA's SONA is not disturbed. It will worry about the new issues later.