MILF Members will not be Integrated into National Police, Armed Forces, Says Gov’t Peace Panel Chair

Chairperson of the government peace panel, Professor Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, on Monday clarified that members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will not be integrated into the Philippine National Police or the Armed Forces of the Philippines, once the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) is passed.

“Again, we would like to clarify, wala pong integration ng MILF sa police force or sa Armed Forces of the Philippines, unlike in the peace agreement with the MNLF, that is not there; and the MILF will not become the police force for the Bangsamoro,” she said during a press briefing in Malacañang.

At the briefing, Professor Ferrer urged the people to “go back to the text” to correct wrong interpretations on the contents of the BBL.

“What we are stressing is go back to the text, go back to the original source, kasi ‘pag ang lumalabas ay ang mga parang general perceptions, then you miss out all of these very, very important provisions in the draft law that basically repeats what is written in the Constitution or upholds what are written in the Constitution and effectively delimits the powers of the Bangsamoro government,” she pointed out.

On the supposed creation of a Commission on Audit under the Bangsamoro government, she cited that according to Article 5, Section 2 of the BBL, the body that will be created in terms of performing some auditing functions in the Bangsamoro shall not in any way prejudice the powers, authority and duty of the national COA.

“What probably has created a lot of confusion is to call that body a Bangsamoro Commission on Audit. So if the idea is to allow for an internal audit system that is within the Bangsamoro government, perhaps, one of the revisions or cleaning up that could be done is to remove any reference to that particular name, which has created much of this confusion,” she explained.

Ferrer also denied that the Bangsamoro government will have its own Commission on Election, noting that the BBL’s Article 7, Section 9 refers to a Bangsamoro electoral office, which shall be part of the COMELEC.

“The only specialization that this COMELEC office in the Bangsamoro will have, is in relation to the fact that it will have a different kind of an electoral system,” she said.

On the Commission on Human Rights, Ferrer said the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) already has such a commission.

“So what is provided for here is that the Commission on Human Rights in the Bangsamoro shall have a coordinative and complementary relationship with the national Commission on Human Rights in carrying out its mandate, which is exactly what we have now in the ARMM, and that has been facilitated by a memorandum of agreement between the national Commission on Human Rights and the newly created the two- or three-year-old ARMM Commission on Human Rights,” she said.

“Maybe what is a little bit controversial here is that in the proposed law, there is this provision that provides for prosecutorial powers for the Bangsamoro Commission on Human Rights, which the current National Commission on Human Rights does not have,” she added.

Amid the confusion, Ferrer said she hopes that Congress would be able to provide a better version of the BBL.

“We are not saying that the way the law is drafted now is the best language already that there is, and we look up to the wisdom of Congress to be able to come up with a much better language, precisely to be able to avoid these kinds of misinterpretation,” Ferrer said. (PCOO)