Maniolas

NEGOTIATING panels of the government and the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) began yesterday a new round of talks in Kuala Lumpur to launch what they called the “implementation phase” of the peace process. Chief peace negotiator Jesus Dureza said this underscored the Duterte administration’s commitment to honor the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro (CAB) signed two years ago during the term of President Benigno Aquino III, and to develop it further into a more inclusive enabling law that can pass muster in Congress. An earlier draft of the Bangsamoro Basic Law was rejected by the previous Congress due to what lawmakers said were its many “unconstitutional” provisions. “This [meeting] is actually to launch the implementation stage of what we envisioned to be a Bangsamoro enabling law. It is to implement the CAB that was signed between the government and the MILF in 2014,” Dureza said last week. The meeting is expected to focus on the mechanism that would determine how a new Bangsamoro law would be crafted. It is also expected to tackle key provisions of the CAB that could already be implemented, such as the delivery of socioeconomic development programs in Mindanao. Under the Duterte administration’s peace road map, all Bangsamoro peace agreements, including those with the Moro National Liberation Front (1996), would be integrated into the new enabling law that will create a new Bangsamoro government unit, Dureza said. In attendance at the launch in Malaysia were members of Congress, including Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, who was tasked Read More …

THE BRUTAL deaths last year of 44 Special Action Force officers in the hands of Muslim rebels in the Mamasapano, in Mindanao, led to a degree of mistrust between Christians and Muslims as reflected in social media, according to a US Department of State report. In its 2015 International Religious Freedom Report, the state department cited the January 2015 incident as serving to boost anti-Muslim sentiment in the mostly Christian country. Apart from the slain officers, also killed in the clash were more than 20 Muslim rebels and civilians, as well as Zulkilfi bin Hir, alias Marwan, a foreign bomb-making expert who was the original target of the ill-fated operation. “Observers stated the controversy surrounding the Jan. 25, 2015, Mamasapano incident… caused distrust between Muslims and Christians to resurface in social media, online commentary and public statements,” the report said. The report is carried out every year by the state department’s Office of International Religious Freedom in about 199 countries. It is headed by Ambassador-at-Large David Saperstein. A video that found its way to the public showing one of the 44 being shot twice at close range “spread very quickly on social media,” although at the time it was circulated, the full context was not verified, it said. Its release, coupled with gory photos that came out after the attack “showed the increasing strain in relations between Muslims and Christians,” the report said. The report noted the observation of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility that press reporting on Read More …

Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump’s recent assertion that the United States was letting in “animals” from “terrorist nations,” among them the Philippines, has provoked a strong backlash in Manila, making headlines and prompting Albay Rep. Joey Salceda to propose barring Trump from the country. Salceda last week filed a resolution seeking to “refuse Donald J. Trump entry into the Philippines” for the “wholesale labeling of Filipinos as coming from a ‘terrorist’ state.” READ: Trump lumps PH with terror states Salceda condemned Trump’s “ugliness of utterances, largely unprompted and undeserved,” even though Trump profited handsomely from licensing his name and brand to a real estate development in the Philippines. In seeking Trump’s exclusion from the Philippines, Salceda cited Bureau of Immigration rules that bar the entry of foreigners who “clearly generated impressions not conducive to public good and [have] shown disrespect or [made] offensive utterances to the Filipino people.” Salceda said Trump’s “unrepentantly negative, dysfunctionally nativist, aggressively adversarial attitude” toward Filipinos was dangerous, as he could win the US elections in November and lay down policies that could affect the interests of American citizens of Philippine descent. Filipinos represent the fourth-largest immigrant group in the United States, about 4.5 percent of the total immigrant population, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington. The median income of Filipino households headed by an immigrant was $82,370 as of 2013, far above the $53,000 of US-born households, the institute says. “With his current stature as candidate of Read More …