CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, February 13, 2009—The chairman of the Episcopal Commission of Inter-religious Dialogue of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), advised the government to go slow on “frontloading” the new concept of demilitarization, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) in negotiating peace with rebel movements especially the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio J. Ledesma told this reporter that instead of negotiating peace “in the context of DDR” as what President Arroyo has ordered the government’s peace negotiators, the government should include DDR in its agenda for negotiations with rebel groups and not up front.

“This has to be discussed by both sides of the conflict,” he said.

As what has been widely reported and circulated especially by the MILF, the government’s strategy of negotiating peace in the context of DDR is tantamount to surrender, which would effectively negate the concept of negotiations.

“With the way it is being interpreted by the other group, the DDR should be the end goal, the final result of the peace process,” Ledesma said.

Undersecretary Pedro Cesar Ramboanga Jr. of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) denied that DDR is a “precondition” to the peace negotiations with the MILF.

During the “Round Table Discussion on Sudan Peace Process and DDR Program” at the Mallberry Suites Hotel on February 10, Ramboanga said while it is true that DDR is being “frontloaded” in the peace negotiations, it is actually “not the thing but just part of the whole peace process.”

“A peace agreement without provisions for DDR is not viable, workable and sustainable,” Ramboanga stressed.

The “Round Table Discussion on Sudan Peace Process and DDR Program” was organized by the OPAPP and Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD). It had as guest speakers Mr. Nyasha Donald Masiwa, a former rebel fighter of Zimbabwe and now UN advisor to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement; Mr. Ahmed Ali Sabiel Barima, DDR adviser for the government of Sudan; and Mr. Kelvin Ong, a Singaporean who is chief of the UN DDR Unit.

According to Ong, the DDR program is “essentially negotiated.”

But because the government is placing a high emphasis on DDR, “we risk the danger of communicating only the disarmament or demilitarization of the rebel movement, which is just one part of the whole DDR program or the peace process,” he said.

The DDR framework of peace is at the forefront of the Arroyo administration in its attempt to revive talks with the MILF and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). But both revolutionary organizations flatly rejected DDR as basis of discussion in any resumption of talks.

This is because the way it is being communicated, the government is “transmitting the wrong term to the other side,” said Misamis Oriental Vice Governor Norris Babiera.

According to an article posted in the MILF’s website luwaran.com, DDR “has nothing in substance, except the attempt of the government to make the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) capitulate.”

Given that the MILF will accept DDR, “do we have the political will” to implement and see it through? asked Babiera.

“The success of DDR depends on the political will of the parties involved. DDR can only be implemented if there is political agreement,” stressed Masiwa, a specialist in DDR and post-conflict reconstruction of Africa, notably Zimbabwe, Somalia and Sudan, among his many credentials.

According to the article in the MILF website, even if the MILF will accept DDR, it will not succeed because “President Arroyo has no political will, is a ‘political lameduck’ and chose her neck instead of the collective good of the people when real decision has to be made.”

Another article in the same website quoted Transcend International founder Professor Juhan Galtung of Norway as saying during a DDR forum in Makati on February 5-8 as saying that “DDR is not the solution to the age-old problem of the Bangsamoro people.”

The forum was facilitated by the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC) at the Asian Institute of Management. (Bong D. Fabe)