DAVAO CITY, 16 June — A proposed scheme power-sharing scheme between the rivals Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would not happen, a spokesman of the MILF said yesterday.
“It is next to impossible” says Eid Kabalu, reacting to the proposal made earlier by an official of the Office on Muslim Affairs (OMA).
Kabimbanan Mamukid, OMA director for the Davao Region in Mindanao, said power-sharing over the administration of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and the Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD) was a logical step once the MILF and government signs a peace agreement.
He said the scheme would surely hasten the much-needed peace and stability prerequisite to meaningful development in Mindanao.
The current SPCPD chief and governor of the four-province autonomous region is MNLF chairman Nur Misuari, who signed a peace settlement with Manila in 1996.
The MILF has not recognized the settlement, opting instead to negotiate its own peace agreement. Talks between government and MILF representatives have been scheduled next week in Libya.
MILF spokesman Kabalu yesterday told radio station DXAB of ABS-CBN-Davao that Mamukid proposal is “entirely irrelevant and unacceptable to the MILF.”
In the first place, he said, the MILF has never asked for it and has no intention of asking power-sharing from the MNLF.
“Moreover, the MILF as a policy does not recognize the ARMM as well as the SPCPD,” he said, noting that the council is a product of the MNLF peace accord with the government, which the MILF does not recognize.
