BY WENDELL VIGILIA

THE former head of the government peace panel with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front yesterday warned that the government’s continuing failure to secure a final peace agreement with the secessionists would give rise to a new breed of Muslim extremists espousing "jihadist activism."

"We might be seeing a new dimension of conflict inspired by new jihadist activism," said Rodolfo Garcia, former chairman of the now disbanded peace panel.

President Arroyo dissolved the panel early this month after deciding to abandon the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain with the MILF. The MOA was supposed to be signed in Kuala Lumpur August 5 but the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order. The tribunal is hearing questions on the constitutionality of the agreement which will create a Muslim homeland, among others.

The government has announced a shift in peace policy – from negotiations with armed groups to consultations with stakeholders with priority on the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of the rebel groups.

It said results of the consultations will determine if the government would resume talks with the MILF.

Garcia, a former AFP vice chief, told a forum at the UP School of Economics that extremists might strike once the negotiations get even more protracted or worse, if these fail ultimately.

"It would be a quantum leap from the level of conflict (that) we’ve known in the past," he said. "The resultant damages may be bigger than one can imagine."

Garcia said the new breed of rebels, including the groups of renegade MILF Commander Ameril Umbra Kato and Abdurahman Macapaar alias Commander Bravo "will be a harder group to deal with."

The groups launched attacks in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte in the part two months.

Garcia said the bungled negotiations with the MILF was the "last opportunity presented to us to settle a lingering problem before the leaders of the MILF whom we were dealing with fade away to give way to a younger generation of leaders more impatient, deeply suspicious and distrustful of government and with a more progressive, activist, and possessed of a dangerous disposition."

He said that had the government created a "peace constituency" earlier as recommended by the Philippine Human Development Report (PHDR) in 2005, the MOA would not have been attacked.

"Perhaps the MOA could not have been bedeviled for what it is not. Perhaps many unfounded suspicions and fears stoked by its oppositors could not have resulted in hysteric outcries," he said.

While it came late, Garcia said Arroyo’s order for a wide-ranging consultation with Mindanao stakeholders was still the logical tact to take.

"Through nationwide constituency, engagements with civil society organizations, communities, schools, vital and influential sectors, business, religious, academe, sectors with stakes and which will reap the dividends of peace, that momentum may be maintained," he said.

Garcia defended the peace panel, saying the crafters of the MOA merely adopted an approach "that refused to be boxed in by the obtuse traditional approaches and experiments of the pasts which were widely assessed to have failed to deliver all the aspirations of the Bangsamoro."

He said the MOA was a "bold, out-of-the-box tack" which aimed to distinguish between the legitimate aspirations of a minority people and the non-negotiable requirements of Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity."

He noted some of the provisions of the MOA contained recommendations of the 2005 PHDR.

Garcia lamented the MOA was much-demonized and called many names, like "a sellout, a dismemberment of the Republic, virtual grant of independence to Bangsamoro, a pact that is unconstitutional."

He also took a swipe at politicians who opposed the MOA, saying some of them were just doing it for politics.

"A public with a clear understanding of the roots of the Moro problem, aware of the injustice and indignity suffered by their people, aggravated by poverty, deprivation and ignorance engendered by an inadequacy of opportunities or worse, of opportunities denied, will not be taken in by politically motivated posturing and machinated exaggerations," he said.

The forum, "Government of the Republic of the Philippines – Moro Conflict: Is there an end in sight?" was hosted by professor Solita Monsod and attended by former President Joseph Estrada, former Senate President Franklin Drilon, former Sen. Orlando Mercado, and Michael Mastura, a member of the MILF negotiating panel and a former congressman of the first district of Maguindanao.

Estrada assailed Arroyo for "entertaining" the secessionist rebels, saying that "sometimes, men need to wage war in order to achieve peace."

"The Philippine government has returned to the old pattern of peace talks and cease-fire with kidnap-for-ransom and other hostilities throughout," he said.

Estrada said he declared an all-out war against the MILF in 2000 with the conviction that "it is the duty of the commander-in-chief to protect the territorial integrity of the country at all costs."