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MILF to Leonen: 'Insist on direct access to PNoy'


If you want to succeed at your job, insist on having direct access to your boss. This was the advice the Moro Islamic Liberation Front gave to Marvic Leonen, former law school dean and now the head of the government panel that is tasked to negotiate peace with the largest and arguably most influential Islamic armed movement in southern Philippines. (See: UP Law dean heads GRP panel in talks with MILF) “This is a very important lesson learned (from) our more than a decade of negotiation with government and I hope our counterpart in government will not take this as an offense," MILF deputy spokesman Khaled Musa said on the MILF website Wednesday night. If Leonen has no direct access to the president, he would find himself in an extremely difficult and frustrating situation, Musa said. This will be especially true in times of hard bargaining where only the president can make the final say, he added. “Checkpoints in the flow of decision-making can become chokepoint," he warned. “The crucial decision must not stop with the peace adviser, but has to go all the way to the president as the final terminal," the MILF official said. Musa noted that past chief peace negotiators had direct access to their respective presidents: Fortunato Abat had direct access to then President Fidel Ramos, and Maj. Gen. Orlando Soriano and Maj. Gen. Edgardo Batenga had direct access to then President Joseph Estrada. Under negotiating panels formed from 1997 to 2000, Musa said, many important agreements were signed. In addition, he observed that negotiations involving third-country facilitation required government negotiators to have direct access to the president. Musa cited as examples Jesus Dureza, Silvestre Afable Jr., Rodolfo Garcia, and Rafael Seguis, all serving under then President Gloria Arroyo. "Afable was a cabinet member in charge of communication; he also saw to it that he did not only have an open line with Arroyo, but also managed to secure a separate budget for the peace panel from that of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP)," Musa said. Garcia at the time was also holding a Cabinet post and had a very strong clout with the military, while Seguis reported directly to Mrs. Arroyo, Musa noted. The chief peace negotiator is not supposed to be subservient to any person or layer in the bureaucracy, Musa said. The MILF is a separatist group that has been fighting for an Islamic state in the southern Philippines region of Mindanao for several decades. In its website, it describes itself as “a religious and political organization made up of Islamists engaged in liberation struggle based in their traditional homeland embracing Mindanao, its adjacent islands, and the Sulu archipelago."—DM/JV, GMANews.TV

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