By Meanne Corvera
Eagle News Service
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Thursday thanked the government for supporting and promoting the passage of a Bangsamoro Basic Law.
MILF Chairman Al Haj Murad Ebrahim, who held a dialogue with Senators Sonny Angara, chairman of the committee on local government; Juan Miguel Zubiri, JV Ejercito and Risa Hontiveros in their camp in Sultan Kudarat Maguindanao, also expressed hope that the measure, once passed, will not suffer the same fate as the other agreements previous governments espoused.
The MILF chair cited as an example the 1996 agreement which his group rejected, but which another, the Moro National Liberation Front, approved of.
The agreement signed by the Republic of the Philippines and the MNLF in Jakarta, Indonesia, established an Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
According to the MILF chair, it was because of these failed agreements that war continues to take the lives of over 100,000 people, and destroys properties worth billions of pesos.
Murad, however, said that in this case, the fact that the senators went to Mindanao themselves to hold a public consultation on the BBL showed that the government now was sincere in pursuing the peace process and in passing the measure.
Like Murad, South Cotabato residents expressed support for the passage of the BBL, which President Rodrigo Duterte has deemed a priority.
The residents took to the streets to publicly voice their support for the creation of a Bangsamoro entity, and for the version of the BBL submitted by the Bangsamoro Transition Commission.