Don’t undermine MILF’s laying down of arms —Palace

Malacañang on Wednesday appealed to lawmakers and to the public not to dismiss the relevance of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)’s move to hand over its weapons and combatants to an independent body.

At a press briefing, presidential spokesman Sec. Edwin Lacierda lamented how some critics consider Tuesday’s decommissioning ceremonies as something done just for show.

“[Decommissioning] is an important process, an important factor that people tend to take for granted because iilan lang daw ang arms, but those are high-powered arms,” Lacierda told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.

“For people who have lived 20 to 30 years of their lives fighting, that’s a radical shift in mindset from a culture of fighting to a culture of peace,” he added.

On Tuesday, the MILF turned over 75 weapons to the Independent Decommissioning Board. A total of 145 former MILF fighters also registered for decommissioning to start their transition to civil life.

This first phase of the decommissioning process is part of the normalization process specified in an annex of the peace agreement entered into by the MILF and the Philippine government in March last year.

Lacierda further said that lawmakers should empathize with the MILF more.

“For us here in Manila, sitting comfortably in our residences, it’s easy for us to say ‘balewala ‘yan.’ But that’s a big step for those who have decided from a life of being a warrior to a life of being an ordinary civilian. That’s a big shift,” he said.

The draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which embodies the peace agreement between the MILF and the Philippine government, is still pending in Congress. -NB, GMA News