REP. Elijah San Fernando (PL, Kamanggagawa) yesterday sought a congressional investigation into the delayed turnover of weapons by Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels due to the government’s alleged failure to fulfill the socio-economic provisions of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).
San Fernando filed House Resolution No. 126 which seeks an inquiry “on the ongoing normalization process component of the CAB between the MILF and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines to identify gaps that impede the progress of the peace process and determine effectual mechanisms towards sustainable peace and reconciliation.”
The resolution aims to “harmonize the implementation of the terms both parties agreed upon in the Annex of Normalization, as well as other relevant components of the CAB, promoting remedies thereof for the agreement to move forward.”
San Fernando warned that broken commitments “threaten to unravel years of progress toward lasting peace in Mindanao.”
He said the Marcos Jr. administration’s failure to fulfill socio-economic provisions under the agreement “has forced the MILF to halt the final phase of its combatants’ decommissioning – a setback with serious implications for peace and stability in the Bangsamoro region.”
“The government, particularly the Marcos administration, has not been keeping their end of the bargain in the peace process. That is why our Moro brothers were forced to stop the decommissioning of MILF soldiers,” he said.
The CAB, which was signed on March 27, 2014 under the last Aquino administration, was hailed as a historic step to end decades of armed conflict.
The resolution said the agreement was the “cornerstone and key product of the long-fought peace process aimed at ending decades of armed conflict and fostering lasting peace and development in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).”
The agreement included commitments not only to disarmament but also to socio-economic programs designed to reintegrate former combatants into productive civilian life, dismantle private armed groups, and address the root causes of conflict.
The Bangsamoro Organic Law serves as the enabling law for the CAB.
The resolution noted that while more than 26,000 MILF combatants have already been decommissioned, the MILF central committee has said “not a single one of them has successfully undergone transition to productive civilian life” due to delays in delivering promised socio-economic packages.
However, presidential assistant for the Bangsamoro transition David Diciano said the government has already implemented major socio-economic interventions since 2015 even if the government and MILF peace implementing panels only approved the socio-economic package framework for the MILF decommissioned combatants in February 2024.
“In the spirit of goodwill and good faith, the disparity in the pronouncements of both the MLIF and the Government of the Philippines must be given due attention and consistently addressed in order to ensure the parallel and commensurate implementation of all elements of the normalization track and to substantially responds to the needs of decommissioned combatants, thereby advancing the unity envisioned in the agreements between the two parties, in conscious pursuit of genuine autonomy and lasting peace,” the resolution said.
