“And, it is worth noting it does not only come from Christians,” Rood told executives and representatives of different news media organizations in Mindanao who gathered here for the 4^th Mindanao Media Summit.

The summit, which carries the theme “Mindanao 2020:  The Vision Begins with Us,” opened Thursday and ends on Saturday.

He said that “Governor Teng Mangudadatu of Sultan Kudarat [also] led a rally yesterday [Thursday] in Isulan”.   

Rallies opposing the MOA on ancestral domain were held a day earlier in Kidapawan City in North Cotabato led by Vice Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, Iligan City in Lanao del Norte led by Mayor Lawrence Cruz and in Zamboanga City led by Mayor Celso Lobregat.

“So the demand for consultations does not come just from die-hard opponents of the peace process,” Rood said.  

“I emphasize this because the single most dangerous tendency in the peace process is to stigmatize it as dividing Muslims and Christians,” he added.

Rood said that “we definitely don’t want to go down that path”.   

He said “stakeholders” in the peace process, as well as residents in Mindanao “need extensive, multisectoral consultations that are truly informative rather than mere mobilizations for or against the peace process”.

The MOA on ancestral domain though, has shown how the public would react, or vent their emotions on certain issues they perceive to affect them deeply, he said. 

Quoting a civil society leader, he said that “now every Pepe and Pilar, Miriam and Yusop, is speaking or blogging or writing about the peace process.”

But while reactions opposing the MOA were “reasonable”, many others were not favourable though, for the peace process, he warned. He noted that some opponents also viewed the MOA as a decoy of the Arroyo administration to push Charter change. 

The TAF official also cited the objection of a city mayor to the possibility of losing barangays to the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity, a temporary name for a proposed area of governance for Muslims in Mindanao, which he said might be due to the likelihood of getting a cut on his internal revenue allocation (IRA).

The amount of IRA for a local government unit is based on the size of its land area.

“What do you expect any responsible mayor to say?” Rood asked.

He said “it is entirely true that there has been a lack of adequate consultations” but clarified that he was not laying the blame on both panels.

“There were reasons for this – both the GRP and MILF panels talk about the need for confidentiality in negotiations”. 

He stressed however, that this same consensus poses the “central problem in the peace process” –implementing the entire agreement would need public participation and a sense of “ownership” of its final makeup. 

He said that “ownership” would be present or increased if the residents were allowed to participate in determining the “inputs into final decisions rather than only being asked at the end if they agree”.

He said this issue has been raised by the “Mindanao Working Group of donors, government agencies, private sector, and civil society” in March this year. The working group, he said, called for greater participation among stakeholders in the peace process.  (MindaNews)

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