RSSDAVAO CITY, Philippines (UCAN) — Christian leaders are lamenting that presidential candidates campaigning around the country have not given enough attention to the peace process.
“Peace should be the Philippine president’s priority concern,” Bishop Deogracias Iniguez of Kalookan told UCA News Feb. 18.
“The peace process is such an important aspect of Philippine society and life,” and needs a comprehensive approach involving all sectors including the grassroots, he added.
The Catholic bishop heads the secretariat of Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform (PEPP) that gathered recently in Davao City for its national assembly.
Secretariat member Ofel Cantor noted that neither of the two frontrunners in the May 10 presidential elections nor the administration bet Gilbert Teodoro, Jr. have spoken enough in various forums about their platforms for peace.
“They came to Davao and met with Church people … but they were more interested in winning the votes of these people’s followers than thinking of a peace plan,” Cantor said.
‘No time to talk about peace’
She said when her group tried to meet with candidates to ask them about their perspective of insurgencies and their approach to solving these, staff of Benigno Aquino III, Manuel Villar, Jr. and Teodoro replied that their candidates “have no time to talk to us about the peace program.”
PEPP wants candidates to bare their peace agenda especially relating to resumption of peace talks with communist rebels.
Their Feb. 11-13 assembly focused on reviving peace talks with leaders of the 41 year-old communist insurgency because efforts to resume talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are already underway, Bishop Iniguez told UCA News.
The Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has been fighting a protracted war against US “imperialism” and capitalism since 1969 through its New People’s Army (NPA). It heads the National Democratic Front (NDF), the broad revolutionary front organization.
Corazon Aquino’s administration initiated talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF in 1986. Negotiations facilitated by bishops and priests stalled several times. When they snagged in 2004, negotiators were preparing to discuss socio-economic reforms.
Both parties had signed in 1998 a Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law binding both groups to respect human rights laws in the armed conflict.
PEPP was convened last 2007 by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, National Council of Churches of the Philippines (NCCP), Ecumenical Bishops’ Forum, Philippine Christian Evangelical Churches, and the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines.
It receives support from the Norwegian Ecumenical Peace Platform.
PM08876.1589 February 18, 2010 46 EM-lines (416 words)
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