COTABATO CITY – The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has expressed regret over the recent resignation of Presidential Peace Adviser Jess Dureza even as it credited him in the initial success of the MILF-Government peace process.
“We are saddened by his (Dureza’s) resignation…especially at a time that the peace process he assisted for years to push through is in the offing to come into fruition,” Ghazali Jaafar, MILF first vice chair and head of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC), said Thursday night.
Jaafar was referring to the passage of R.A. 11054 by the 17th Congress last July after decades of often stalled peace talks and its imminent implementation process starting with a plebiscite set in January next year.
The edict, known also as the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), seeks to create the more autonomous and subsidies-rich Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in lieu of the 29-year old Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which the MILF consistently rejected since the latter’s birth in 1989.
Dureza, a two-time appointed Presidential Peace Adviser, resigned lately in what he deemed as his way of taking full responsibility in a supposed involvement in alleged corruption by two of his key subordinates fired by the President. The Chief Executive has accepted Dureza’s resignation and is reportedly in search of a new peace adviser.
Among the rumored possible successor of Dureza is outgoing Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., who is due for age retirement this coming December 12.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana was quoted in recent published reports that he would “readily endorse” Galvez if indeed he is one of the officials being considered to succeed Sec. Dureza. Jaafar said Gen. Galvez has been a longtime “friend” of the Bangsamoro people and was officially cited by the MILF lately as a “soldier of peace.”
