Philippines, MILF Reach Wealth-sharing Agreement

The Philippine Government is confident that a final agreement with the country's largest Muslim rebel group can be achieved within weeks after a breakthrough at the latest round of talks in Kuala Lumpur.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has accepted a revenue-sharing deal that would apply to the proposed autonomous region of Bangsamoro.

Dr Steve Rood is a member of the International Contact Group that has supported the peace process and he was present at the talks in KL.

Speaking to Richard Ewart from Radio Australia, Rood says it required a lot of tough talking, but the breakthrough that's been achieved is highly significant.

“It was indeed hard bargaining, both sides made compromises but in the end what they established was true fiscal autonomy for the upcoming new political entity, the Bangsamoro in a way that hasn't previously been available to the arrangements down here in Muslim Mindanao.”
 
Have we made the jump now, are we on the way to finally achieving what these talks set out to achieve?
 
“Well we're continuing on the path but there are still a couple of pretty hard things to continue negotiation. One is what are the exact delineation of powers between the Bangsamoro and the national government. And the other is the process of decommissioning the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the new security arrangements down there.”
 
And I presume on that second point the fact that there has been some disquiet within the MILF particularly on the extreme fringes, they've been active over the last few days. That will make achieving that last point even more difficult?
 
“Or, in fact,  in a perverse way it might make it achieving it a little more easy because the mainstream MILF has been cooperating through the mechanisms in the security forces pursuit of those extreme forces.”
 
You've talked about what's missing and work that still needs to be done. Let’s look on the positive side, what is in this deal, what has been achieved?
 
“The wealth sharing between the new entitites of Bangsamoro and the national government has been said to be greater than the current amount of resources flowing based on a predictable formula so it won't be subject to political whims out of Manila. It will be automatically released so that again it's not a matter of political maneouvering. So that in these ways it provides true fiscal autonomy to the Bangsamoro.”
 
Do you get the sense from the MILF side of the talks that they are convinced that this is a good deal for them? In the past there seems to have been the sense that they haven't been absolutely assured that the government will deliver?
 
“The government's stance has been to try to be sure that whatever they promise they can deliver. And that is sometimes a source of frustration for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front because they often want something more symbolically or something more substantively than the government thinks it can deliver. There is some disquiet because on a couple of the symbolic issues, in particular the division of hypothetical resources if they find gas and oil, is the same as it is in the current Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. It's worth emphasising that they haven't found any of these resources yet, but should they find them it's a 50-50 sharing, and that's the same as what was previously achieved. And the MILF sometimes feel that they need to move forward on all fronts.“
 
As I understand it the government is speaking quite optimistically about an overall agreement being achieved possibly within weeks. Are they being overly optimistic?
 
“I don't think they're being overly optimistic in the sense that after Ramadan's over it's possible to go back to the table. In the power sharing there's only a couple of particular issues that have been thoroughly explored, and so they really are political decisions that need to be made. In the so-called normalisation which involves the decommissioning of the MILF and the new security arrangements down there, there's a fair amount of technical work to be done, but they do have technical working groups that work alongside the political negotiations. So it's certainly conceivable that after two more rounds they would be able to do so. First round is August after the end of Ramadan after id ul-fitr and second one in September.”
 
Do you personally get a genuine sense that the end of the road is in sight, that peace is now achievable?
 
“Either that or the start of the road is in sight because after the signing then we have a two or three year period of implementation in which many things have to happen. And so some of that is in suspension waiting for signing of the various peace details so that they can go ahead and begin to be implemented. The overall deadline of mid-2016 when there's supposed to be regular elections closing the process.”