Magdalo solons want MILF to surrender rebels in Mamasapano clash

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front should turn in their members involved in the clash with the elite Philipppine National Police-Special Action Force and surrender the firearms and gadgets they had seized from the elite cops to prove their sincerity in pursuing the peace process, two former soldiers now in Congress said on Tuesday.

 

Magdalo party-list Rep. Francisco Ashley Acedillo said President Benigno Aquino III, through the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), should order the MILF to return the equipment they have stolen from the SAF members during the ambush in Mamasapano town last Sunday. 

Acedillo was a veteran of the Estrada administration’s all-out war against the MILF in 2000.
 

“If they (MILF) are sincere enough in this peace process, they should return them as a gesture of sincerity,” Acedillo told reporters in a press briefing Tuesday.

 

Fellow Magdalo party-list Rep. Gary Alejano said the MILF should turn in their members responsible for the attack.

 

“I expect the MILF to turn in those responsible. Inamin naman nila that it was their fighters from the 105th Base Command na umupak dun sa tropa natin na PNP. Submit these people to justice,” he said.

 

One of the survivors of the ambush has told GMA News that the MILF rebels took away the uniforms and night vision goggles from the SAF members they encountered in the clash. At least 44 elite police officers died in the incident, which the government has termed a bloody “misencounter.”

 

Not fixated on deadline

 

ACT-CIS party-list Rep. Samuel Pagdilao, one of the founding members of the SAF in the 1980’s, said there is a need for the MILF to show its sincerity because the incident shattered the confidence that was slowly being built between the Moro group and the Philippine government. 

 

“Talagang nasira [‘yung confidence] as far as we are concerned. That confidence was built up along all this time, all these months that had been spent from the time that this process started and a framework agreement was signed until now,” he said. 

 

The ad hoc panel tackling the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) has suspended deliberations on the measure’s provisions on national security and public order pending the submission of investigation reports by concerned government agencies on the incident. The Senate has likewise suspended public hearings on the Bangsamoro bill in Mindanao as a result of the clash.

 

Acedillo said he and Alejano still believed in the peace process. He, however, added that Congress should not railroad the passage of the proposed BBL, especially in light of the ambush.

 

“[Congress] should not be fixated on the deadline,” he said. “We should rethink the deadline because we’re allowing a lot of things to fall through the cracks [if we rush the BBL’s passage],” he said.

 

Ad hoc panel chair Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said he plans to have the Bangsamoro bill approved on third and final reading before Congress adjourns on March 21. —NB, GMA News