A Moro National Liberation Front faction has urged Malacañang to resolve the three remaining issues on territory, provisional government and definition and sharing of revenues of strategic minerals to complete the government commitment to pass an amended law to implement the final peace agreement they reached in 1996.
Datu Doloman Dawsay, spokesperson of the Manobo organization Salugpongan Ta’ Tanu Igkanugon (Unite to defend the land) said that military operations of 68th Infantry Battalion, 60th IB and 4th Special Forces displaced 1,353 individuals comprising 309 families from the sitios of Pongpong, Nalubas, Bagang, Bayabas, Saso, Lasakan, Sambolongan and Bugni of Barangay Palma Gil, Talaingod, Davao del Norte.
The question cropped up after the arrest last week of ranking Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) leaders Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria, even as the stalled peace negotiation between the two parties remained hazy and uncertain.
The Moro National Liberation Front–Executive Council of 15 (MNLF-EC15) said that the peace agreement signed today between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (GRP-MILF) is “problematic” and accused the Malacanang of abrogating the 1996 First Peace Agreement (FPA) with the MNLF,
More than 300 Moro residents here and elsewhere in the region spill into the streets and a public park here and hang green streamers and buntings in a festive mood to celebrate what they say is “historic” day for the Bangsamoro communities here, as Malacanang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed the peace pact today.
A village chieftain here lambasted the military for forcing residents to sign a document that would portray them as “NPA (New People’s Army) surrenderees.”
Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and a former head of the government’s peace panel said that if senior communist leaders Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria who were arrested Saturday showed genuine immunity papers, they “should be released” because the government should “honor what we have committed to the people and to the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines).”
A Manobo tribal leader in Davao Del Norte claimed that new troops sent near their village threatened both men and women and scared schoolchildren as they accused the village of harboring New People’s Army guerrillas.
Only twenty to thirty percent of stray dogs snared daily are redeemed by their owners, said the Animal Control Unit of the Office of the City Veterinarian.
A leader of a Moro organization here said that there is still hope for peace in the country if the “corrupt government” will be headed by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
