Kababaihan at Kapayapaan Issue 5

March 2016Issue No. 5

The women and men of OPAPPPeace builders and peace makers

The OPAPP StoryThree decades in pursuit of peace

Contents

ON THE COVER: “Peace at Hand” by Toni Marie Luna, was a finalist in the Finding Peace Photo Contest sponsored by the OPAPP in 2015. Says Luna, “In spite of our religious and political differences, living in peace should incorporate respect and love for each other.”

Editorial Staff

EditorPaulynn Paredes Sicam

StaffJurgette Honculada

Kris L. LacabaMelisa Yubokmee

PhotographerJoser Dumbrique

Layout ArtistMai Ylagan

This magazine is published bi-annually by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the

Peace Process

Address7th Floor, Agustin 1 Bldg.

F. Ortigas Jr. Road Ortigas Center, Pasig City

Telephone+632 636 0701 to 07

Fax+632 638 2216

Websitewww.opapp.gov.ph

KABABAIHAN atKAPAYAPAAN

Connect with us!

peace.opapp

@OPAPP_peace

peaceopapp

[email protected]

Editorial BoardChair

Sec. Teresita Quintos Deles

Usec. Ma. Cleofe Gettie Sandoval

Jurgette Honculada

Paulynn Paredes Sicam

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The OPAPP Story:Three decades in pursuit of peace By JURGETTE HONCULADA

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

Sec. Teresita “Ging”Quintos Deles A strong sense of self By JURGETTE HONCULADA

Usec. Luisito G. Montalbo It’s personalBy VANESSA ESTRAÑO

Usec. Maria Cleofe Gettie C. SandovalNo secret ingredient By KRIS LANOT LACABA

Usec. Jose I. LorenaKeeping the faithBy PAOLO C. CANSINO

Asec. Jennifer SantiagoOretaPraxis in practiceBy GONZALO GALANG

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Asec. Danilo L. EncinasIn the service of five presidentsBy CHRISTINA LOREN UMALI

Asec. Howard B.CafugauanStraight path to development and peaceBy LESTER NIERE

Asec. Rosalie C. RomeroMaking things betterBy MARC SIAPNO

REFLECTIONS

GPH-CPP/NPA/NDF Table: Are we talking to the right party? By ALEXANDER A. PADILLA

GPH-MILF Table:‘Patience is bitter,but its fruit is sweet’By PROF. MIRIAM CORONEL-FERRER

OPAPP UNITS

LAST WORDS

PEACE CALENDAR

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75

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14

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50

Kris L. Lacaba, Paulynn Paredes Sicam, Jurgette Honculada, Mai Ylagan, Melisa Yubokmee, Joser Dumbrique

1KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAANMarch 2016

FROM THE PUBLISHER

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Søren Kierkegaard

AS THE AQUINO ADMINISTRATION nears the end-term, it would be apropos, following Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, to take a look backward, and a look forward.

What gains did OPAPP score in 2010-16? For one, OPAPP came back on track, with peace processes restored, peace tables functional, and the work of peace embraced by the “whole of government”. For another, the concept of Bangsamoro has entered public discourse. While faced with daunting challenges, a higher level constituency and growing support are building an irreversible momentum for the Bangsamoro peace process.

Over decades, the term Bangsamoro had become synonymous with secession, warfare, and dark undertones of terrorism. At the 2012 signing of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro, President Aquino declared of the new political entity: “… it deserves a name that symbolizes … honors … and celebrates the history and character of that part of our nation.” The moment was electric, the pride palpable, when Bangsamoro became a symbol of peace and a call to unity.

But we must also track the losses: the failure of peace advocates within and outside government to work the politics of reform as evidenced in BBL’s collapse, and the failure, as well, to prioritize and programmatize bridging the Christian-Muslim divide. The bile and vituperation flowing post-Mamasapano revealed, in the words of a Mindanaoan, “the fault lines, the fundamental hatred and antagonisms” that need to be addressed for the BBL to grow deeper roots. Mamasapano has forced us as a people to ask the hard questions: what divides us, what brings us together. We cannot simply legislate a change of heart. We need to shift to a longer-term discourse and political agenda of nation building.

In seeking a peace that is just, enduring and inclusive, two challenges loom large: gender and geography. The first is continuing, the second is, in a sense, fresh; but, in truth, both are as old as time.

Kababaihan at Kapayapaan (K&K) is predicated on the imperative that gender must infuse our peace making: from counting the costs of war to ensuring that women’s roles and contributions are made visible. Thus women’s faces and voices, their yearnings and ambition, have filled its pages. Yet the gender gap remains in how the burdens of war and the benefits of peace are shared, reinforced by the mindset that the mailed fist has primacy over dialogue.

But change is coming, slowly but surely, in security sector reform that is redefining the meaning of security from the narrow security of the state to a more wholistic security of the people; and in PAMANA that is winning the peace on the ground village by village, overriding the drivers of conflict by clipping its talons.

Yet another challenge is the lumad, the indigenous peoples whose 110 ethnic groupings constitute at least 14 million, occupying five million hectares of ancestral domain. The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act has been called “the government’s peace agreement with the IP community”. But where is the peace when their ancestral domain has turned into a battleground? Now the armed conflict in the ancestral domain has become more menacing and complex. The peace that has found its way to the Bangsamoro must find its way to the lumad and their ancestral domain.

A peace that is just, enduring and for everyone is within our grasp. With the gift of hindsight, let us be daring peace makers. Thus, I bid you farewell, thankful for the undeserved honor and privilege of steering OPAPP in the last six years.

May the Force be with the peace makers of the world.

TERESITA QUINTOS DELES

2 KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN March 2016

ITS NAME IS LUMBERING AND PROSAIC: Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP); its location nondescript—several floors of a building dwarfed by the high-rises that now dot the Ortigas business center in Pasig City. In the past year, it has been at the center of a firestorm, a consequence of its mandate to end two major insurgencies through negotiated settlements. And in the vortex of the firestorm is a woman who, with others like-minded, has sought to craft a new vocabulary of peace making which includes a peace lens

that counts the cost and causes of conflict, and a gender lens to surface the dynamism of the roles of women in conflict: victim, survivor, advocate, negotiator, healer.

At the start of the Aquino presidency in 2010, the OPAPP was a house divided, caught in stasis, scrambling for creative approaches to peace.

The new Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP), Teresita Quintos Deles, came into the house with trepidation, but also with confidence and hope in the singular opportunity to reshape the narrative

and discourse of peace that had heretofore been, at best in drift, at worst muddled and militaristic.

The past six years have netted OPAPP clear gains: the revival of three peace tables; the passage of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB); mainstreaming the concept of the Bangsamoro; bringing completion and “closure” to decades-old peace accords; developing a technology of winning the peace on the ground through Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA); and a work-in-progress: Gender and Development (GAD) and

The OPAPP Story:Three decades in pursuit of peace

By JURGETTE HONCULADA

Sec. Deles welcomes former communist rebels to civilian life in Loreto, Agusan del Sur.


the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (NAP WPS). It also leaves OPAPP with a challenge: the lumad or indigenous peoples whose ancestral domain has been turned into a battlefield.

Early pre-OPAPP days

The narrative of armed conflict and peace making in the country is now entering its fourth decade and OPAPP has helped steer that narrative in the last two. OPAPP’s back story begins, presciently, with two female protagonists: Cory Aquino and a nascent women-led peace movement.

A decade-and-a-half of martial rule starting in 1972 under Ferdinand Marcos left the economy in tatters and fueled two insurgencies: the Communist rebellion seeking to overthrow the socio-economic-political order, and the Muslim secessionist movement spearheaded by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

Cory Aquino, riding the crest of People Power, quickly moved to restore constitutional democracy. In one of her first official acts, she declared amnesty for political prisoners and offered the olive branch to the MNLF, the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army/National Democratic

Front (CPP/NPA/NDF), and the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA), a breakaway group from the latter. The talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF and the MNLF faltered, but negotiations with the CPLA fared better, leading to the creation of the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) as an interim structure of regional self-governance.

To rebuild the momentum for peace, President Aquino appointed a peace commissioner whose office supported peace initiatives that included conflict resolution conferences, peace education and peace zones. The peace zones were an assertion of People Power on a smaller scale: entire communities demanding that their public and private spaces be violence-free, effectively banning the use and display of arms within their boundaries.

At the same time, the military’s counter-insurgency efforts intensified (particularly after the failure of talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF in 1987), bringing down the NPA’s armed strength from 25,800 regulars in 1988 to 11,900 by the end of Aquino’s term in 1992.

When Cory Aquino declared 1990-2000 as a decade for peace, sectors of civil society engaged in peace advocacy formed the National

Peace Conference which took on a more defined structure during the term of Fidel Ramos. Ramos targeted economic development as his paramount goal, predicating this on peace and order and political stability, and making the “just, comprehensive and lasting resolution of the armed conflict a priority agenda” (Palm-Dalupan, 2000). Like his predecessor, Ramos sought reconciliation with the Left, endorsing the repeal of the Anti-Subversion law, initiating fresh talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF, and creating the National Unification Commission (NUC).

The NUC launched a comprehensive consultation process in 1993 that covered 90% of the provinces, and reached out to peace zone communities and armed rebel groups. Its final report became the basis for Executive Order 125 on “Defining the Approach and Administrative Structure for the Government’s Comprehensive Peace Efforts”. EO 125 created the OPAPP headed by a cabinet-level PAPP.

The Ramos administration launched fresh talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF, concluded Final Peace Agreement (FPA) with the MNLF, and opened talks and sealed a ceasefire agreement with the MILF. Several agreements were signed with the

Peace ZonesFrom Hungduan and Sagada up north to Tulunan and Pikit in the south, Naga south of Manila and Candoni in the central islands, elders and townsfolk declared that the armed conflict was toxic—killing their children, despoiling their land—and they had to carve sanctuaries in their villages, here and now.

The peace zones (also called zones of peace or zones of life) drew inspiration from EDSA 1986 when the civilian populace literally stopped martial law in its tracks. For indigenous peoples in the north, peace zones were a variation on the theme of bodong or peace pact that kept inter-tribal peace. Civil society, through NGOs like the Coalition for Peace (CfP), Tabang Mindanaw and Kadtuntaya Foundation as well as churches and even former rebel commanders, played a big role in nurturing the peace zones.


CPP/NPA/NDF, including the Hague Joint Declaration, the Bruekelen Joint Statement, the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). The Hague Declaration provides the basis for reopening talks and CARHRIHL is the first of four projected agreements that are to constitute a final peace settlement. Negotiations, in fits and starts, have invariably ended in a stalemate on various contentious issues.

The two-and-a-half year term of Joseph Estrada (1998-January 2001) followed by 10 years of the Arroyo regime were confusing and perilous times for the government’s peace initiatives. Estrada bulldozed his way through the peace process with a declaration of “all-out war” against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2000.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo immediately restored the ceasefire with the MILF but, in 2003, a military assault in Buliok

in Central Mindanao’s marshlands initiated another round of violence and displacement. Peace talks—and the ceasefire—resumed, with Malaysia now serving as third-party facilitator on the invitation of government. However, the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) reached by the two parties in 2008 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Smarting from the rebuff, two MILF rogue commanders attacked predominantly Christian settlements in northern Mindanao causing massive devastation and displacement. The peace table would reopen in the last remaining months of the Arroyo presidency, but this time also including the participation of the International Contact Group, composed of international state and non-state “friends of the process” invited by the two parties.

On the CPP/NPA/NDF front, at the end of Arroyo’s term, the peace negotiations was on a seven-year impasse in an increasingly militarist atmosphere ushering in the specter of impunity.

The second time around

How to straighten and revitalize a dysfunctional OPAPP? How to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of renewed fighting between the military and MILF forces and the broken down peace talks with the communists? This was not a task for the faint-hearted, but Deles had several things going for her.

For one, she had served briefly as OPAPP head in 2003 to 2005, her term cut short when she joined the collective resignation of ten cabinet members and heads of agencies over the issue of high-level electoral fraud. That first stint gave Deles an insider’s view of what ailed OPAPP

(and the larger structures of which it was part) and what was needed to restore its integrity and function.

For another, Deles had built networks of support within civil society, the product of decades of activism and advocacy in the women’s, and later, the peace movements.

Third, the need for conceptual clarity was borne, in no small measure, out of her engagement in the women’s movement. Along with her feminist colleagues, she believed that gender could not be a mere afterthought in, or appendage to, government programs. Gender had to be mainstreamed in the bureaucracy and placed at the center of government thinking and practice.

By the same token, peace could not be a mere “add-on” or supplement to government’s business as usual. It could not be relegated to one small office whose only task was to prepare for, and undertake, negotiations with insurgent groups, with what happened before, or what would happen after, the talks of little or no concern to the peace office.

For Deles, peace, like gender, had to be a driving force in government, informing its vision of development and good governance, and infusing its programs and services on the ground.

Deles’ first term at OPAPP was marked by the crafting of a comprehensive peace plan that was mainstreamed in government, as Chapter 14 of the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan: 2004-10.

House cleaning

As a returnee to OPAPP in 2010, the first order of the day was housecleaning, which meant

Executive Order 125: Six paths to peace • Pursuit of social, economic

and political reforms • Consensus building and

empowerment for peace• Peaceful, negotiated

settlement with rebel groups• Programs for reconciliation,

reintegration into mainstream society, and rehabilitation

• Addressing concerns arising from continuing armed conflict

• Building and nurturing a climate conducive to peace


reorganization not once, but several times, followed by stabilization, then consolidation.

OPAPP undersecretary and executive director Louie Montalbo who helped Deles in the post-Arroyo transition recalls coming upon a “damaged organization, people distrustful of each other”. After Deles’ resignation in 2005, Arroyo had appointed five heads of office (or PAPPs) in as many years; consequently there was no “continuity of leadership”, nor of programs and services. Not wanting to “get caught in a crossfire (of leadership change)”, the staff were on “survival mode… each unit operating independently of the other.” This was also true of the (negotiating) tables, where each table kept pretty much to itself. OPAPP, says Montalbo, “was not moving in the same direction.”

Returning to OPAPP in 2010, Deles’ “vision (of what OPAPP should be) was very much in place,” Montalbo says. President Aquino’s agenda included a just conclusion of all internal armed conflict during his term and Deles, from experience, saw the need to pursue “complementary tracks” to ending armed conflict.

Deles began by constituting full panels for renewed talks with the MILF and the CPP/NPA/NDF. Along with designated senior staff, she would assume responsibility for the other tables which were focused not on negotiating new political settlements but on completing the implementation of existing agreements. The MILF and the CPP/NPA/NDF constituted the two major insurgent groups in the country, the former with over 10,000 core combatants and the latter with over 4,000 armed regulars.

Two other tables were categorized as “closure” tables aimed at achieving the final disposition of arms and forces a decade or two after the signing of their peace agreements; and a third table was in an over-extended review process. The closure tables were with the CBA-CPLA in northern Luzon and the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Pilipinas/Revolutionary Proletarian Army/Alex Boncayao Brigade-Tabara Paduano Group (RPMP/RPA/ABB-TPG) primarily based in western Visayas. The third table consisted of the OIC-facilitated Tripartite Review Process (TRP) of the implementation of the GPH-MNLF 1996 FPA.

The MNLF table

Publicly announcing its existence in 1972 with university professor Nur Misuari as chair, the MNLF spearheaded the Muslim secessionist struggle against the dictatorship, its armed strength peaking to 30,000 according to sources, capable of engaging the military in large-scale warfare. In 1976, the MNLF signed the Tripoli Agreement with the Marcos government brokered by the Organization of the Islamic Conference or OIC (now Organization of Islamic Cooperation), which provided for autonomy in southern Philippines and a ceasefire.

The truce broke down in 1977, the year Hashim Salamat left the MNLF to form the MILF. The MNLF’s numbers declined and, by 1983, it had only 15,000 armed regulars. In 1996, Misuari reached a FPA, which constitutes the “full implementation of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement”, with the Ramos government. With the full backing of the national government, he was elected governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and concurrently appointed chair of the Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development covering

Multiple tracks in Chapter 14 of the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP): 2004-2010Peace making and peace keeping

• Continuing and completing peace negotiations with rebel groups• Support for local efforts to immediately reduce violence on the ground• Completing the implementation of Final Peace Agreements• Strengthening and enhancement of programs for reintegration and rehabilitation of former combatants

Peace building and conflict prevention

• Rehabilitation and development of conflict-affected areas• Catch-up development plan for Muslim Mindanao and affirmative action for Muslims• Support for interfaith/tri-peoples dialogue and community-based healing and reconciliation


the original 13 provinces under the Tripoli Agreement. His term was generally marked by corruption and mismanagement. In 2001, following the passage of RA 9054 which amended the earlier organic act and expanded the area of coverage of the autonomous region. Misuari led a failed uprising against government and was eventually jailed. The MNLF further split into several factions.

In 2007, at the behest of the OIC, the GPH commenced the TRP, with the aim of identifying obstacles to, as well as modalities towards pushing, the full implementation of the 1996 Agreement. After the 4th Tripartite “ministerial” meeting in 2011 and two Ad Hoc High-Level meetings in 2011 and 2012, respectively, the government moved for the completion of the extended review process. In September, 2014, one week before the scheduled TRP meeting to discuss the GPH proposal, MNLF followers identified with Misuari attacked Zamboanga City leading to two-weeks of hostilities that claimed over 100 lives and displaced over 100,000 civilians.Finally, in January 2016, the government, the MNLF, and the OIC issued a joint communiqué marking the conclusion of the

TRP eight years after it began. The joint communiqué identified four areas for implementation. Its most important provision centers on the forging of “common grounds” between the MILF, as the Party to the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), and the MNLF, as the Party to the 1996 FPA, “to ensure that the gains of the 1996 FPA … are preserved and the CAB are fully implemented with the end goal of integrating the gains achieved in these peace agreements in the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL)” (OIC Resolution 2/42 P.3). The parties further assure “the vital role and participation of the MNLF” in the transitional authority to be set up under the BBL.

With the completion of the review process, the Tripartite Implementation Monitoring Committee (TIMC) will be set up before the end of the Aquino term. This will monitor the implementation of the specific commitments in the joint communiqué. Thus the way is paved for closer coordination, if not convergence, between the two main forces that have been in contention in leading the Bangsamoro struggle for self-determination for nearly four decades.

The GPH-MILF table

Starting talks afresh with the MILF was not easy following the debacle of the MOA-AD.

“Can we trust you?” the MILF asked government. The newly constituted government (GPH) panel, led by Dean Marvic Leonen of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law, needed to maneuver an often tense and tenuous table. In August 2011, in what the MILF has termed a “grand gesture”, President Aquino broke protocol to personally meet with MILF Chair Al Haj Murad Ebrahim in Narita, Japan. In September 2012, the panels signed the milestone Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB).

When Leonen accepted a second presidential appointment as associate justice of the Supreme Court, panel member Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, a UP professor, was appointed panel chair. Ferrer ably steered the GPH panel in its negotiations up to the signing of the CAB in 2014 and beyond. What helped keep the negotiations on course was a ceasefire agreement signed by both sides as early as 1997 which “held the peace when things

From left: OIC Special Envoy for Southern Philippines Ambassador Sayed El Masry, OPAPP Usec. Jose I. Lorena, OPAPP Sec. Teresita Quintos Deles, OIC Secretary General Iyad Amin Bin Madani, MNLF spokesperson Atty. Randolph Parcasio and MNLF representatives Muslimin Sema and Samsula Adju at the high-level tripartite meeting on January 26, 2016, in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.


were difficult on the table,” says Montalbo. With both the FAB and CAB signed, and the BBL awaiting legislative approval, the Bangsamoro train seemed unstoppable. But in fact it was.

A botched encounter between police commandos and MILF forces at Mamamsapano in January 2015 gravely, although not fatally, wounded the Bangsamoro peace process. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened and why the tragic loss of lives. Top police officials were less than forthcoming in Senate hearings and there were gaps in testimonies that allowed oppositors and unscrupulous politicians to derail the BBL and discredit the peace process.

However, both the GPH and MILF have worked to establish, and they continue to expand and strengthen these mechanisms to ensure that hard-won gains will not be reversed. Through a tight and often confusing run-up to the May national elections, OPAPP efforts persist to ensure that that the legal-political track to the full implementation of the CAB, inclusive of all major stakeholders, successfully crosses over to the next administration.

Multiple tables

Much attention has been given to the “multiple tables” or the robust architecture that has been set up to support the main negotiating table. Hence, the GPH-MILF joint Coordination Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH) was established with additional support from an International Monitoring Team (IMT). The IMT is also charged with monitoring “humanitarian, rehabilitation, development and socio-economic aspects of signed agreements” and observance of International Humanitarian Law and respect for human rights. Another body, the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG) is focused on the isolation and interdiction of all criminal syndicates … including so-called “lost commands operating in Mindanao.” The terms of both the IMT and AHJAG are renewed annually and have been extended until 2017.

The list of support bodies and mechanisms which have been set up by the panels includes the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission as part of the CAB annex on normalization and the Joint Task Forces on Camps

Transformation (JTFCT) as part of the decommissioning process. A Third Party Monitoring Team, composed of local and foreign experts, has been put up and will function up to the signing by the parties of the prescribed Exit Agreement.

Yet another buttress for the GPH-MILF peace process is the peace constituency, which is most robust in Mindanao but also vocal in Metro Manila and elsewhere. This vital support encompasses academe, big business, the churches and interfaith bodies, and other civil society groups which, time and again, have rallied in numbers whenever the process is imperiled and spirits are flagging.

This wholistic approach to peace building and peacekeeping informs OPAPP’s vision of the peace process: aggregating the strength of many and holding fast in the face of political grandstanding, groundless recriminations, ugly mudslinging, bureaucratic indifference and generations-old biases coming to the fore.

The GPH-CPP/NPA/NDF table

High hopes attended the resumption of government peace talks with

President Aquino and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front launch the Sajahatra Bangsamoro at a ceremony held in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao on February 11, 2013.


the CPP/NPA/NDF in 2011, after a seven-year impasse. The reconstituted GPH panel was headed by a human rights lawyer, Health Undersecretary Alexander Padilla, and its composition reflected a geographical, sectoral, as well as gender balance.

A December 2010 ceasefire, the longest Christmas ceasefire to date, and two informal talks augured well for the conduct of negotiations that sought to tackle three comprehensive agreements—on socio-economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, and the end of hostilities and disposition of forces—which, along with the already-concluded CARHRIHL would comprise the final peace agreement between the GPH and the CPP/NPA/NDF.

In the first formal peace talks in Oslo in February 2011, the GPH panel pressed for an accelerated timetable of negotiations to ensure there would be ample time for implementation after the conclusion of the Final Peace Agreement. The GPH panels engaged in a “side table” to address the release of alleged political offenders as well as the issue of safety and immunity

guarantees that had derailed past negotiations. The main table was to focus on completing in the next 18 months negotiations on the three remaining agreements. Finally, the panels agreed to the release of the NDF’s detained “consultants” but subject to the verification detailed in the JASIG. Four months later, in June 2011, the verification process failed when the sealed envelopes that had been stored in a safety deposit box in a Netherlands bank contained no photographs of the NDF consultants who had been listed under their aliases, as prescribed by the JASIG, but rather old, encrypted diskettes which the NDF could not decrypt.

Given this bleak scenario amidst an escalating word war, rising violence on the ground, and an intractable framework for peace negotiations, the time seemed ripe for a different approach.

In 2011, CPP founder and NDF chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison proffered a special track (ST) to negotiations that would not be burdened with the usual conditionalities invoked by the NDF. By late 2012 after several discreet meetings, the parties agreed to carry

out discussions on a joint declaration of national unity, a ceasefire, the creation of an advisory committee to recommend reforms, among others. But when both sides met in early 2013, the NDF did a turnaround and presented three draft agreements that would not only return the talks to the onerous framework of the regular track but even add more objectionable preconditions, such as the termination of government’s Conditional Cash Transfer program and PAMANA.

On the heels of the ST’s collapse, the GPH panel engaged in a series of “public conversations” nationwide to update peace constituencies and the public on the state of the peace talks and generate proposals on how to move forward. Drawn from insights gleaned from these consultations, along with lessons distilled from the experience of past GPH panels, a “new approach” was proposed to include the following components: talking to the right authority within the Party, agenda bound (doable) and time-bound engagement, and a ceasefire or measures lowering the level of violence on the ground. In the remaining months of this administration, the panel is focused on refining its recommendations to be able to turn over a peace table to the next administration that is less burdened by the rigidities of the past.

As early as 2014, the CPP/NPA/NDF has said that they were willing to wait for a new administration to resume negotiations.Notwithstanding singular efforts by the Third Party Facilitator, the Royal Norwegian Government, to revive the talks, they remain at a standstill.

The government has stood fast on principled negotiations based on GPH-C/N/N peace talks, Oslo, Norway, February 2011.


good faith and a sincere desire to achieve peace. As long as the CPP/NPA/NDF holds on to the primacy of armed struggle, with the peace negotiations as subsidiary to it, the peace process will not go far. The repeated collapse of GPH-CPP/NPA/NDF peace talks under five presidencies in over three decades bears testament to this.

The CBA-CPLA table

The CPLA split from the NPA, constituting its first major splintering, in protest over the latter’s lack of respect for indigenous Cordillera culture and identity which was under grave threat from the martial law government’s plan to build the Chico River dam which would have extensively inundated portions of the Cordillera mountainous homeland, including forests, farmlands, and sacred grounds. Responding to President Cory Aquino’s early peace overtures, CPLA founder, the former priest Conrado Balweg, reached agreement with the government with the signing of a sipat or a ceasefire agreement in 1987.

With the signing of the sipat, the Cordillera elders signified a

renewed pursuit of their aspirations, embodied in the autonomy ideal, under a political climate where they no longer saw the need for armed struggle. With the legislative process for autonomy aborted in two failed plebiscites, however, they have since engaged the government from one administration to the next seeking concessions and the completion of government’s commitments under the sipat. In time, the original group has splintered into factions. While it no longer fought government, its members continued to hold arms and follow a command structure which has lent itself to lawless and criminal undertakings.

The CBA-CPLA finally signed a Closure Agreement, entitled “Towards the CPLA’s Final Disposition of Arms and Forces and Its Transformation into a Potent Socio-Economic and Unarmed Force”, with the present Aquino government in July 2011, thereby constituting the first peace accord to be signed under this administration. With the understanding that a renewed autonomy track should be pursued with Congress and no longer on the peace table, the agreement includes the following components: the disposition of arms and forces;

socio-economic reintegration; community development projects; and legacy documentation, all of which are meant to contribute to the CPLA’s transformation into an unarmed socio-economic force.

Under disposition of arms and forces, a total of 337 firearms have been turned over to the Philippine National Police (PNP) for safekeeping. These firearms are due for demilitarization and destruction in March 2016.

Under the socio-economic integration component, a total of 168 sons, daughters, and next-of-kin of the former CPLA members have been integrated into the regular force of the AFP.

Another 511 former members have been hired as Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) forest guards. The rest of the profiled CPLA members have organized themselves into people’s organizations availing of livelihood with capability-building support from Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Agriculture (DA), and the Offices of the Cordillera provincial governors.

Under community development projects, 62 out of 81 projects have been completed, with the remaining 11 projects ongoing. The former CPLA combatants have been organized and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the Cordillera Forum for Peace and Development (CFPD, Inc.). CFPD now sits in the Cordillera Administrative Region’s (CAR) Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC), representing civil society.

The legacy document has been completed and officially turned

Army integrees from the CPLA in Gamu, Isabela, November 9, 2015.


itself into a legal entity engaging in legitimate socio-economic and political activities. In this regard, the group has been organized as a cooperative and registered with SEC under the name Kapatiran. Its party list Abang Lingkod won a seat in the House of Representatives in the 2013 elections.

Community Peace Dividends (CPD) refer to 100 barangays, jointly identified by the TPG and government agencies, which will benefit from development interventions to reduce their vulnerability to armed groups and ensure that they experience the concrete, inclusive benefits of the Closure Agreement.

Upon the signing of the Closure Agreement, the government shall commence with the processing of alleged political offenders (APOs) towards providing them with the available and appropriate legal relief.

Since 2013, interagency technical working groups at the provincial level in Negros Occidental, Aklan, Negros Oriental and other affected areas have been undertaking preparatory work in anticipation

of the eventual signing of the agreement. Since 2013, a total of 128 TPG members have been employed as forest guards by DENR, while another 55 have availed of livelihood opportunities under DENR’s National Greening Program with Kapatiran.

Members have also been provided support and assistance in the form of health insurance from PhilHealth and study grants from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

PAMANA

Tough as it is to win the war, winning the peace on the table, or on the ground, is even harder. And it is clear to OPAPP that when the table gets stuck, and especially when it stalls, winning the peace on the ground becomes all the more necessary.

PAMANA, the Filipino word for legacy, is also is the acronym for Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan, which refers to peaceful and resilient communities. PAMANA is the Aquino government’s framework to bring peace and development to conflict-affected and conflict-vulnerable areas, many of which are remote and inaccessible.

over to the CBA and the CFPD, Inc. As the only table that has completed the cycle of signing and implementing a peace agreement, the legacy document is an invaluable contribution to the peace process. It is also a necessary part of closure – to give due recognition to the crucial role the group has played in Cordillera’s proud history. The RPMP/RPA/ABB-TBG table

In December 2000, the RPMP/RPA/ABB-TPG, a splinter group of the NPA primarily based in Western Visayas, signed a peace agreement with the Estrada government one month before it was ousted from office. While the implementation of the agreement proceeded under the Arroyo administration, it remained unfinished business when the Aquino government assumed office ten years later, with the group still holding arms and operating as an army.

The GPH and the TPG have agreed on the elements of the closure agreement that the parties are targeting to be signed before the end of this administration. Similar to the GPH-CBA-CPLA Memorandum of Agreement, one major component is the disposition of arms and forces. The parties have agreed to a full and immediate disposition of the group’s weaponry, based on the results of the inventory of firearms, ammunition and explosives belonging to its profiled members. Accordingly, 556 firearms and 404 ammunition and explosives have been gathered from its members and will be turned over to the government for destruction upon the signing of the closure agreement.

With the turnover of its arms, the group commits to transform PAMANA road rehabiliation project in Zamboanga Sibugay


therefore have a strong sense of ownership. Two CARAGA regional staff members report that PAMANA projects are helping win back people’s trust in government which they perceive had long neglected them. As of December 2015, barangays in Butuan City and in Surigao City highly vulnerable to conflict have benefited from nearly 1,200 projects under DSWD’s CDD program: potable water, sustainable livelihood, farm development including rice mill and pre- and post-harvest facilities, provision of fishing equipment, etc.

Lumad communities used to view road projects negatively, associating them with the entry of mining firms. Community meetings were held to explain that the project belonged to the community, not the mayor. Thus the people had to learn to protect it. IPs have started to return to their AD especially with the entry of such PAMANA projects as delineation and titling of the AD, and construction

OPAPP has envisioned a development program for conflict-affected areas (CAAs), with specifications relative to the status and requirements of the five peace tables. PAMANA is present in seven geographical zones that were chosen and prioritized to complement the ongoing peace processes (see box). Using available government and other data, the total number of barangays to be covered was whittled down from 8,000 to 5,000, representing nearly 12% of the total 42,000 barangays nationwide.

PAMANA aims to reduce poverty, improve governance and empower communities. It draws together over a dozen government agencies to deliver social services such as health and education, infrastructure, and livelihood, including farming and fishing equipment. PAMANA agencies include the DA, DAR, DILG, DOE, DOH, DPWH, DTI, DSWD, CHED, NCIP, NEA, NIA, PhilHealth, and the ARMM Regional Government. Local governments are important partners in the implementation of PAMANA. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the PNP provide the necessary security support and sometimes AFP’s Engineering Brigade undertakes construction work in high-security areas. OPAPP exercises oversight over PAMANA and is tasked with training, providing guidelines, and monitoring and evaluation.

In 2011, its first year, PAMANA programs were pilot-tested: with ARMM-DSWD for shelter, DAR for agrarian reform, and local governments for sub-regional development. With its oversight function, OPAPP, by 2014, had visited all 5,000 PAMANA barangays. Under DSWD’s Community Development Driven (CDD) program, each barangay receives PhP300,000 annually for a period of three

years to undertake a peace and development project of its own choice. According to Asec. Howard Cafugauan, CDD projects are designed to avoid “elite capture” with processes that involve a wide range of stakeholders. Training is also provided under DBM’s “bottom-up budgeting” or BUB which engages local stakeholders in the budgeting process.

Since PAMANA communities must contend with both poverty and conflict, the usual parameters and performance standards often do not apply to its projects. Government agencies would ordinarily steer clear of conflict areas because of security and related concerns. For instance, under its regular program, DPWH will not undertake infrastructure building in high-risk areas with no return on investment (ROI). But under PAMANA performance indicators are based on peace and security, not ROI. Thus “roads are built where no roads would have reached,” observes Cafugauan.

The Spanish funding agency for development, Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID), has provided support to train PAMANA-participating national agencies and local government units (LGUs) in conflict-sensitive planning and peace building processes. The way has been opened to mainstream the peace agenda, or install a “peace lens”, in the work of government across different agencies from the national to local levels. An evaluation of PAMANA will soon be undertaken by De La Salle University which will review national government projects for conflict sensitivity and peace promotion (CSPP).

PAMANA regional managers and coordinators are from the area and

Areas covered by PAMANAAreas covered by the Bangsamoro Fronts • Central Mindanao• Zamboanga-Basilan-Sulu-

Tawi-Tawi• Palawan

Areas vulnerable to conflict with CPP/NPA/NDF• Bicol-Quezon-Mindoro• Samar Island• Davao-Compostela Valley-

CARAGA

Areas covered by closure programs• Cordillera Administrative

Region (CAR)• Negros-Panay


of a tribal house. PAMANA has also helped resolve intra- and inter-tribal conflict.

PAMANA staff point to the technical working group (TWG) as a best practice because it pools the expertise of various agencies for smooth project implementation: DILG serves as fund manager; NCIP ensures observance of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC); DPWH ensures that roads are well built and completed; and the PNP-AFP provide security In high-risk areas.

Indeed, PAMANA projects pose extra risks to staff. For instance, a CARAGA area coordinator was with a group inspecting a reservoir intake box in Surigao del Sur when they were held by around 15 NPA members for three hours, given lectures (“gi-doktrinahan”), warned that PAMANA projects must stop, and threatened with death if they reported to the military.

Still the PAMANA workers persevere, saying that most PAMANA projects help unite and solidify the community. A water system, for instance, motivates residents to return to the village and community ownership encourages them to maintain and improve the facility by moving it from level 2 (tap stands) to level 3 (households).

Truly, barangay by barangay, PAMANA is living up to the promise of peaceful and resilient communities.

NAP WPS

Like PAMANA, the Philippine NAP WPS is a “value added” to the OPAPP as it seeks to strengthen its mandate and practice of peace making in a variety of ways.

Where PAMANA is a means to mainstream a peace lens at various levels of governance and the communities they serve, the NAP WPS adds gender to the equation.

The Philippine NAP WPS was spurred, in the main, by United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1035 which focuses on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, and seeks protection of their rights. A later resolution (UNSCR 1890) highlights the issue of sexual violence against women and girls in situations of armed conflict.

NAP WPS’ twin goals are (1) protection of women’s human rights in armed conflict and prevention of violations; and (2) participation and empowerment. Two support mechanisms are (1) promotion and mainstreaming; and (2) monitoring and evaluation.

The Philippines scores high in terms of participation of women in peace processes, formal and otherwise. Miriam Coronel Ferrer, head of the government panel negotiating with the MILF, signed the CAB. Few women, if any, can lay claim to the singular honor of signing a major peace accord. In OPAPP’s approach to peace processes, women make

up a critical mass on center stage (as panel members) and behind the scenes (as heads and key members of secretariat, legal and technical staff, and the like).

In a sense, drawing up the NAP WPS was like fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Women are at the front, back and center of armed conflict in the country, yet they are mostly cast in passive roles of victims and survivors. That their roles as advocate, mediator and healer needed to be recognized, and that their special needs as women in situations of armed conflict needed to be addressed was one part of the puzzle. Another part were the legal and policy mandates for gender mainstreaming in government which moved slowly, unevenly through the decades. Yet another part was the fact that peace, like gender, needed to be mainstreamed within and outside government.

The NAP WPS is the pairing of the peace lens (or conflict sensitivity lens) with the gender lens for a clearer view of why armed conflict occurs, how armed conflict is sustained, who pays the costs of conflict, and what it takes to disarm the conflict.

OPAPP employees at the Women’s Month Celebration, March 2014.


The GAD fund, enshrined in Philippine law and policy, provides the wherewithal for NAP WPS programs in government. “Let GAD be NAP” sounds like facile sloganeering, but in fact it makes a lot of sense. On the one hand, all government offices— (National Government Agencies) NGAs and LGUs alike—are mandated to allocate at least 5% of their budgets for GAD activities that will make a difference in women’s lives. Yet the GAD fund has often been abused, misused or left unused.

On the other hand, taking on the agenda of peace and security for women on a national scale is no walk in the park. There are gender sensitivity sessions to be undertaken, gender planning to be done, gender monitoring to be formulated. And the concrete projects and programs emerging from all this comes with a bill of particulars.

Many excellent Philippine laws languish for lack of funds. Pairing the need (NAP WPS) with the wherewithal (GAD Fund) was a tour de force by OPAPP. The various structures and mechanisms that make up the NAP WPS, the capability-building activities to match form with content—have

been documented in past issues of Kababaihan at Kapayapaan. This long-overdue pairing of peace and gender is slowly bearing fruit.

The journey continues

The journey of OPAPP in the past six years has been a perilous one, with five ambitious peace tables, each with its own set of problems, set-backs and dilemmas. But it has enabled and even enriched these processes with a unique vision that has moved these processes out of their traditional boxes with the introduction of the peace and gender lenses through PAMANA and NAP WPS. This has aided government in winning the peace on the ground, community by community, even as it struggles with the various insurgencies at the peace tables.

The end note, however, is also one of unfinished business, With the clock ticking on the Aquino administration, OPAPP is working double time to ensure that today’s gains will not be reversed tomorrow.

There is the BBL which failed to be passed by the last Congress, on which the Bangsamoro peoples continue to pin their hopes for peace

and development. The talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF must be revived under a more flexible framework so that it has a chance to succeed. The RPMP/RPA/ABB-TPG closure agreement must be completed with a better understanding of the needs of the former rebels on the ground.

PAMANA’s success in bringing water systems, electricity, roads and other basic services that have changed the lives of communities in distant conflict-affected areas must be expanded, replicated, its lessons internalized. PAMANA has shown that if reforms, or services, are genuine and motivated by love of country and people, they can never come too little, too late.

PAMANA will soon undergo a formal evaluation process. It might help to ask how many villages have fought back against revolutionary taxation, and whether they succeeded. Like the CBA-CPLA legacy document, that would be a template in great demand.

Many lessons have been learned and insights gained from OPAPP’s endeavors in the last six years. These have to be documented, analyzed, manualized, popularized, shared, celebrated.

Finally, there is the matter of the lumad or katutubo, the indigenous peoples whose ancestral domain has become both boon and battlefield. Both the NPA and corporate interests have cast covetous eyes on the lumad as recruits or on their territory where mining has supplanted logging as a source of riches.

We leave the OPAPP with more questions than answers. But as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke says, “Live the questions now…”PAMANA accessibility projects help sustain livelihood.


Secretary Teresita “Ging” Quintos DelesA strong sense of self

GENDER AND PEACE have been the interweaving leitmotifs in Teresita Quintos Deles’ life, translated into the twin desiderata of poetry and power for women in full measure, and peace here and now, especially for those caught in the cross hairs of armed conflict.

Now in her mid-60s, Deles is ready for whatever life brings her when she leaves the position of Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP) after the May elections. She has held the post twice: upon the invitation of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2003, resigning as part of the Hyatt 10 (cabinet officials who broke with Arroyo on the issue of unbridled election corruption) in 2005; and, second, as appointee of incoming President Benigno S. Aquino III in 2010.

Deles heads the OPAPP, an office bearing the same title she does. Kin and intimates call her Ging; at work she is PAPP.

By JURGETTE HONCULADA

Donning the chador

Several images sum up the passages in her life, thus far: the ingenue, fresh from college, teaching and mentoring others; the young adult on the cusp of wifehood and motherhood; the budding feminist building women’s groups and coalitions; the ardent peace advocate birthing, with other like-minded, peace groups and coalitions; the crossover from NGO to GO, testing the waters of bureaucracy.

The latest snapshot, stark and startling, is of a Deles draped in a black chador (traditional Muslim garb combining headscarf, veil and shawl). The occasion was the conclusion, in January, of the Tripartite Review Process in Jeddah of the implementation of the 1996 peace pact between the Moro National Liberation Front and the Philippine government. Deles has a look both regal and inscrutable, not evincing defeat (over

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

Ging Deles through the years: The politics of hair


Founding of PILIPINA

Yet another dilemma, contradiction if you will, would rear its head. When the INDEX singles met, married and became couples, they did so on an equal footing. But when the babies started coming, along with stepped-up housework, the burden invariably, or disproportionately, fell on the women. The husbands were no male chauvinists but the young marrieds had to contend with the weight of culture, tradition and society, including household and emotional arrangements that shortchanged women and privileged men. In NGO gatherings, as well, Deles and other women would gravitate towards each other and compare their deficits.

Although the contemporary women’s liberation movement in the United States dates back to the mid-60s, the issues it raised took at least a decade or longer to roil and rankle in Filipino women, many middle class, who were engaged in social movements. The reason, Deles says, is that “we had to take the issue home”.

And the issue took shape and form in the double burden, in pay and rank discrimination, in the double standard, some sexual harassment, lack of child care. In 1981 Deles and three others founded the first feminist organization in the country, PILIPINA.

The imperative of an alternative lifestyle (without which alternative careers would lack grounding) grew along with a feminist consciousness whose central tenet was, and is, “The personal is political.” Remedios Rikken, chair of the Philippine Commission on Women and PILIPINA co-founder, credits Deles with her stress on a counterculture that critiqued the consumerist mainstream, devising alternative ways of celebration and stressing the essentials (Christmas is Christ’s birth, not Santa Claus), parenting (shared), child-rearing (collegial, not competitive).

Within half a decade of PILIPINA’s founding, the EDSA uprising would upend the martial law regime, install Cory Aquino as President, and open up democratic space. Emergent women’s groups rose to the challenge of women’s organizing, advocacy and networking. Gender equality and empowerment became their rallying cry. PILIPINA, and Deles as its founding chair, played key roles in the formation of half a dozen women’s groups and coalitions including the Philippine Women’s Research Collective, Lakas ng

Congress’ failure to pass the Bangsmoro Basic Law), but more calling to mind Robert Frost’s “… but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

Another shorthand rendering of Deles’ milestones is through the politics of hair. In college and as a young teacher, Deles wore her hair straight and waist-length in hippie fashion; as a feminist-activist and NGO stalwart she sported wavy tresses (singing with gusto of “silken curls”, lines borrowed from musical theater which, like opera, she loves); and, in the transition from civil society to civil service, the curls going chop-chop, perhaps prefiguring the pragmatism essential to a growing political sense. And when public service moved from fighting poverty to winning peace from out of the shards of war, the hairdo became a “don’t” worn close-cropped. This no-nonsense style also reflects Deles’ persona: low-key, straightforward, and, mostly, what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

Youngest of six children to a pediatrician father (who was once Philippine General Hospital director) and a mother who nurtured her brood as she did her roses, with exquisite fare and care, Deles led a typical middle class existence. But her maverick streak manifested itself in a year-and-a-half stint as secondary school teacher, introducing a new curriculum of poetry and various readings with Simon and Garfunkel playing in the background, and coming to class in beads, bangles and miniskirt. Inquirer columnist Rina Jimenez-David says that she “bloomed” as a student under Deles.

Soon after, Deles was mentoring college students in alternative education for the SPES Institute (SPES is Latin for hope), an NGO that focused on community organizing among the urban poor. In 1972, prolonged rains flooded Central Luzon for 40 days prompting Ateneo students to organize to help flood victims. As their mentor, Deles helped the students process their life-changing experiences, fielding questions such as, “How can our volunteer work not simply remain a weekend thing?”

The Social Development Index was born a few years later to provide young graduates with alternative career paths, no more schizophrenic shuttling between two different worlds. Four decades ago, INDEX, founded by Deles, husband Jojo and Karen Tañada, had begun to address the dilemma of paid work (money) vs. volunteer work (conscience) by crafting careers in alternative lawyering, doctoring and other fields.


Kababaihan, Legal Advocates for Women and Women’s Action Network for Development.

It is noteworthy that Deles has been “convenor” to many groups and coalitions in the women’s and peace movements. Karen Tañada, Deles’ long-time colleague, says that Deles is able to draw people of diverse viewpoints together on common ground, taking pains to discuss finer points, bending here, coaxing there. Abanse! Pinay

At a 1992 conference to mark the organization’s first decade, PILIPINA chapters were celebrating gains in consciousness raising and organizing. “But why,” Deles asked, “are we still begging at the table of the patriarchs?” referring to several landmark gender bills languishing in a male-dominated Congress. PILIPINA’s second decade theme was “women and public power”. PILIPINA spearheaded the formation of Abanse! Pinay, the first women’s party list group in Congress. That insight and challenge—of women claiming their space at the table—has remained with Deles ever since.

Peace advocacy

At the same time, the peace movement was slowly but steadily gaining traction. Declaring an amnesty for political prisoners in 1986, Cory Aquino signaled that her administration was ready to talk peace with the two major insurgent forces including the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army/National Democratic Front (CPP/NPA/NDF). With the government-CPP/NPA/NDF talks breaking down and the situation rapidly polarizing, Deles says, “We who fought the dictatorship unarmed needed to intervene.”

And so the Coalition for Peace (CfP) was born in 1987 to move the peace process forward, eventually growing to over 50 organizations sworn to “give peace a chance”. Deles served as CfP co-founder and main convenor. Among others, the CfP helped in the public projection of peace zones, about a dozen of which had developed in various parts of the country starting in 1988.

When Cory Aquino declared 1990-2000 as a Decade of Peace, civil society responded with a lengthy consultation process culminating in a National Peace Conference (NPC) with a “national vision and agenda for peace”. With Fidel Ramos as President in 1992, the NPC became more structured, Deles serving as NPC general secretary. It submitted a “basic peace agenda” to the government.

Earlier the Gaston Z. Ortigas Peace Institute (GZO-PI) was founded to provide institutional support for peace work and serve as a resource and training center. Indeed it served as secretariat for both CfP and NPC, with Deles as GZO-PI executive director in its first decade. By covering all the bases—process, agenda and institutional support—through CfP, NPC and GZO-PI all of which she headed, Deles manifested a thoroughness and single-mindedness that have marked her abiding commitment to peace.

With President Cory Aquino as Commissioner of NCRFW

National Decade for Peace, 1990

Cabinet women with Pres. Aquino

Dancing in the Cordillera

At a liberated zone, EDSA 1986


Social Reform Agenda

Ramos launched the Social Reform Agenda (SRA) in 1994 to be implemented by a Social Reform Council (SRC) constituted by cabinet members and department heads on the one hand and representatives of 17 marginalized sectors and of NGO groups on the other. Deles served as sectoral NGO representative.

Chaired by the President, the SRC met regularly to tackle priority reforms and issues. scoring such gains as the passage of landmark legislation including the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) and the Anti-Rape Law. The SRA-SRC experience was Deles’ introduction to dealing with government up close and personal and, later, facing up to the existential question “Should I stay, or should I go” in terms of partnership with government especially when the economic agenda of government was eroding SRA’s development agenda.

National Anti-Poverty Commission

Through all the ups and downs in Deles’ life and work, one stage has led to the next. That is true of the late 90s when the Ramos administration institutionalized the gains of the SRA process through legislation that established the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), which, however, incoming President Joseph Estrada used as cover for a grand dole-out program. Estrada’s brief term sought to undo much of the reforms civil society worked so hard for, in Deles’ words, “subvert(ing) the peace agenda in terms of the poverty program and the Mindanao war”. Estrada had declared a punitive “all-out war” against the MILF in 2000. In early 2001, after Estrada was impeached, GMA took over the Presidency.

Call it poetic justice but GMA wanted Deles to become lead convenor of the NAPC which civil society helped to create during Ramos’ term. Although the NAPC under Estrada reeked of political patronage—leaving her with the monumental task of house-cleaning, restructuring and healing of relationships—Deles said yes in her first crossover act from NGO to GO.

One lesson Deles carried from the Ramos period was that the government’s economic agenda should not work at cross purposes with its development agenda. KALAHI became NAPC’s anti-poverty policy agenda with its five thrusts: asset reform, human development services, employment and livelihood, social protection and security from violence, and participation in governance. KALAHI consolidated at the community level government flagship programs that included comprehensive social service delivery, urban poor socialized housing, and IPRA implementation.

Moreover KALAHI became part of the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) (2001-2004), unprecedented for an anti-poverty program. Deles made sure that the practice of top-level GO-NGO meetings under Ramos would continue under GMA through regular NAPC en banc meetings that included 14 sectoral representatives.

Meeting US President Barack Obama

With Myanmar President Aung San Suu Kyi

With former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan

With former Ireland President Mary Robinson

With Brad Pitt at the Global Summit on Sexual Violence, London, 2014


One event in early 2003 revealed to Deles the resilience of both the armed conflict and the militarist mindset that breeds it. In violation of a government-Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) ceasefire agreement, the military assaulted the MILF main stronghold at Camp Buliok in Liguasan Marsh. The damage was incalculable: over 41,000 persons displaced soon after the attack, some 200 casualties including rebels, soldiers and civilians, and the reported bombing of National Power Corporation towers by the rebels. In spite of GMA’s pronouncements to quell the fighting, and the NAPC’s best efforts, evacuees—losing faith in the ceasefire—stayed away from their homes for nearly half a year.

Next stop: OPAPP

Buliok and Deles’ visits to conflict areas under KALAHI pointed to her next stop in government, peace work through the OPAPP. Succeeding two generals as peace adviser, Deles was the first woman and the first civilian to head OPAPP. Deles believes that no male president would have gambled on her: “It took a woman, even an avowed non-feminist, to appoint another woman to a male-dominated field.” (GMA appointed a record number of women to the cabinet including Dinky Soliman, social welfare, and Emilia Boncodin, budget.)

Déjà vu

Deles’ task at OPAPP brought her feelings of déjà vu: house-cleaning, reorganizing, making offices connect with one another, creating vital policy and media units. She did not want an OPAPP whose sole raison d’être was peace talks: she wanted it “to become a real peace

office with the capacity to bring the entire machinery of government to work for peace” (INCITEGov, 2008). Key to this was crafting a peace plan that would eventually constitute a separate chapter in the MTDPP (2004-10), a reprise of what she had achieved earlier at NAPC.

Although her first stint with OPAPP ran for barely two years, Deles managed to set up “peace corridors” with local stakeholders and victims of conflict and to engage vibrant peace networks in Mindanao in seeking to link “the issues of development and peace on the ground” to make a difference in the lives of those living on the margins. She also initiated the processes that would lead to security sector reform. As well, she reconceptualized peace making as constituting many tables that buttress the formal negotiating table. With the MILF peace process, this included cessation of hostilities and rehabilitation and development.

Walkout with the Hyatt 10

By mid-2005 the question of staying or leaving (once more) confronted Deles and fellow executives in government, triggered by the revelation of massive election fraud linked to GMA. With a “compromised” President, Deles said, there was no “credibility and trustworthiness” in the peace process. She and nine colleagues resigned at a press conference in Hyatt Hotel, and were dubbed the Hyatt 10.

The next step for the Hyatt 10 was articulated in a provocative acronym: INCITEGov meaning International Center for Innovation, Transformation, and Excellence

Sec. Ging with husband Jojo and, from left, son-in-law Ronald Mendoza and daughters Paola, Laila and Karla.


in Governance. Fearing that the President would “sacrifice” ongoing reforms for the “politics of survival”, the Hyatt 10 founded INCITEGov not only to closely monitor the reforms, but also to move them forward.

From mid-2006 Deles took the helm of INCITEGov as managing trustee working full time. Among the government reforms it has focused on are budget reform (through a national budget monitoring program) and security sector reform “to ensure democratic control of the armed forces”. INCITEGov has also undertaken training for civil society to understand government processes, its constraints and possibilities. In a word INCITEGov seeks to connect the dots between politics, governance and development. Deles reports that as a consequence “partnerships between civil society and government are more vibrant and innovative”. OPAPP, Part 2

Philippine politics is many things; it can also be surreal. In 2010 it swept into the presidency Noynoy Aquino, scion of the martyred Ninoy Aquino and the revered Cory Aquino whose funeral cortège, a year earlier, drew mourners in the tens of thousands. Noynoy, now President Aquino, promptly called Deles, and other members of Hyatt 10, back to government service.

Deles’ second stint as chief peace adviser, and OPAPP’s activities, have been amply documented in past issues of Kababaihan at Kapayapaan. Suffice it to say that there have been halcyon times, and periods of grief and rage. There are clear gains, but also deep losses.

Now nearing the end of her second OPAPP term, Deles seems to have already lived several lifetimes. How does she do it?

Deles has a strong sense of self, who she is, what she wants to do. This core bespeaks a deep spirituality and faith, and also encompasses family. Deles has said that “marriage is love, certainly, but it is also ideological,” referring to shared beliefs and values which extend to her three daughters, now adults. Core also means fellow travellers: “If you choose another way, you have to build a core to travel with, otherwise kakainin ka (you will be eaten up)”.

Deles has a sense of balance: the dynamic interplay between NGO and GO, her crossover (not once, but twice) from one to the other; the difficulties, contradictions even, inherent in the male and female principles and how to steer clear of the shoals; and the prose of everyday work, soldiering on even when running on empty, keeping attuned to the poetry of music and art and literature, feeding the soul even as one must feed the body.

Often it’s a tight balancing act for Deles but her instincts, sharpened by feminism and the peace movement, have stood her in good stead. She has survived, and sometimes flourished, in work that has spanned nearly half a century. Now she is ready to re-imagine herself, not dwelling on “the things I couldn’t do”, and promising “I will be wiser”. Teresita Quintos Deles knows that few things in this world can match up to vintage wine.

BESTIES. Sec. Ging with Philippine Commission on Women Chair Remmy Rikken

Grandma Ging with only grandchild Miguelly


“IT IS PERSONAL TO ME.”

This is how OPAPP Executive Director Undersecretary Luisito Montalbo, 52, describes his work for peace. The peace process, he asserts, is very close to his heart.

He says that it is important for a person to understand the value of his work on a personal level. “Mahirap kapag hindi nagkamukha sa iyo ang trabaho mo. Sa akin, it has to be personal (It is difficult when you do not see value in the work that you do. For me, it has to be personal). In this kind of work, it is inevitable to get personally involved.”

“Iyong mga kinakausap natin, may mukha, may pangalan (The people we talk to have faces and names).”

Undersecretary Luisito G. MontalboIt’s personal

By VANESSA ESTRAÑO

Each time there is an outbreak and the possibility of a spill-over, you’re fearful for them, for their safety. You don’t want bad things to happen to these people. Nakasama mo, nakilala mo, sinsero, mabubuting mga tao, nagkataon lang naman that you’re on different sides, (You have been with these people, you’ve gotten to know them and found them to be sincere, good people. It just so happens that you’re on different sides). You also both don’t want war anymore.”

He adds, “Part of it being personal is, I have realized that if war breaks out, people that I’ve gotten to know will be in harm’s way.”

He recalls an instance when he visited a conflict-affected area in

Mindanao where he was able to talk to some of the people after the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was aborted.

“I remember, I was talking to someone, umiiyak siya sa akin (she was crying to me). Because it was so close, and they thought they would finally get what they deserve and that was taken away from them. Such situations define how you see the work. It characterizes the kind of passion that you need to put into it.”

Louie Montalbo assumed office as executive director and undersecretary for operations in OPAPP in August 2010.

“Pag-isipan mo”

Working for the government, not to mention the peace process, however, is not something Montalbo initially envisioned himself to be doing. Prior to OPAPP, he had no experience working in the government, except for consultancy work in government institutions.

He had just gotten involved with peace work when Secretary Teresita Quintos Deles tapped him to be her consultant for organizational development during her first term as Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS


A newbie in the sector who had neither background nor expertise in the workings of the peace process, Montalbo was hesitant when he was again invited by Secretary Deles to join her in OPAPP when she was appointed PAPP for the second time in 2010.

Three times she offered and three times he declined, adamant that he was content in helping her in the transition to the new administration.

He would have continued to decline had it not been for a good friend who chided him and became his voice of reason, telling him, “Di mo sineseryosong pag-isipan. Pag-isipan mo nang seryoso (You’renot taking this seriously. Think about it seriously).”

“Iyon ang mali ko. Seryoso kong pinag-isipan. At dahil sa seryoso kong pinag-isipan, umoo ako. (That was my mistake. I thought about it seriously. And because I thought about seriously, I said yes),” he says in jest.

Adjusting to government work

“It was new to me, and so it was really a steep learning curve.”

According to Montalbo, he had a very trying first year as executive director at OPAPP. Aside from the fact that he was adjusting from consultancies to actual work in the government bureaucracy, the very people in the agency he was expected to run did not trust him or any of the other newly installed officials.

“When we entered OPAPP, there had been five PAPPs under former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. When we came in, Annabelle Abaya was the most recent PAPP,”

Montalbo says, recalling the revolving door politics during the previous administration and how Abaya had uncovered corruption in the agency during her term. “There was a lot of accusation of corruption in OPAPP at the time.”

He noted how the OPAPP employees were wary of the new leadership, expecting them to investigate individual staff members. According to him, it took two years before they were able to gain some level of trust from OPAPP employees. “We were seen as the conquering heroes out to exact vengeance on anyone.”

As executive director, he had to make tough decisions that made others view him negatively. After over five years in the service, and with the many changes he installed in OPAPP’s internal systems, Usec. Montalbo is very much aware of how his position has not made him very popular with the staff and employees under him. “I know I am not the most popular person here. Tanggap ko naman iyon (I accept that). I knew that when I accepted the job.”

Asked what was the most difficult decision he had to make as executive director, Montalbo says without hesitation, “Letting people go.

Nothing can be more difficult than that. Especially when the people you have to ask to leave are those who have been around for a long time. For me, and I think as should be the case of anyone who leads an organization, that is the most difficult part of the work. Everything else pales in comparison.”

Student activism

Louie Montalbo is the second of the three children of Natividad Gravador, a retired public school teacher from Dumaguete and the late Leonardo Montalbo, a retired Bureau of Customs (BOC) employee from Batangas. A graduate of the Notre Dame of Greater Manila, a private Catholic high school in Caloocan City, he entered the University of the Philippines (UP) in 1979, to take up Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy.

At the time, UP was the prime breeding ground for radical student activism, with students rallying against the martial law regime of then President Ferdinand Marcos. One of the most revolutionary student organizations active at the time was Kabataang Makabayan (KM). For two years (1979 to 1980), Montalbo would be actively involved in the activities of the KM.

Usec. Montalbo at the launch of PAMANA projects in Tungawan, Zamboanga Sibugay on February 24, 2012.


“It was unheard of at the time to be in UP and not be an activist.” Montalbo confessed that he even contemplated going to the mountains and joining the New People’s Army (NPA) — until his arrest in 1981. On his third year in university, at a rally with fellow KM members, Montalbo was arrested and brought to the Western Police District (WPD) Headquarters in Manila while the other demonstrators were brought to Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, the incarceration camp for political detainees at the time.

“Una kong tawag sa nanay ko, sabi ko, ‘Sa kwarto ko, sa ilalim ng kama, ang daming materyales na... subversive materials, pakisunog lahat (The first thing I told my mother when I rang her was, in my room, under my bed, are many subversive materials. Please burn them).’”

“At the time, uso pa ang salvaging (extrajudicial executions were rampant). My Mom stayed with me at the WPD. I was with common criminals. My Mom stayed the entire night just to make sure that I would not be picked up and brought somewhere [to be killed].”

He was detained for six days, and released with the help of his father’s connections. The other protesters were less fortunate. It took two months before they were released. The experience convinced him to find another way for him to live out his activism.

“For the next few years in college, what I did was find a way to redeem myself,” Montalbo says. His experience in jail was a wake-up call, a realization that something bad could actually happen to him and how it would affect his parents. His comrades from KM would continue to persuade him to join their activities, but his father was adamant that he break off his connections with the movement.

“At a certain point, uuwi ako sa bahay, sasabihin ng tatay ko sa akin, ‘Nakipagkita ka, ano?’ Pinapasundan ako (I would come home, and my father would say, ‘you met up with someone, no?’ He was having me followed). I was under surveillance. My Dad asked someone to trail me and find out what I was doing in school. Interesting times, to say the least.”

After graduation from UP in 1983, Montalbo took up Master’s in Law in

the same university for two years before deciding that he did not want to be a lawyer. “Looking for meaning in life,” he decided to join Days with the Lord, a Catholic movement established in 1966 at the Ateneo de Manila High School in Quezon City by a group of young Jesuits.

“That brought me to another path of service.” He entered the seminary but after four years, he decided the ministry was not for him.

The search continues

“I was really trying to find out what all this is for. What do I really want to do? At a certain point, the confirmation, internally and externally, was not happening at the level that I thought it should. I wasn’t happy. What I thought I could find there, I wasn’t finding. So I left.”

Montalbo pursued a graduate degree in Business Administration at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, proceeding to consultancy work and joining the faculty of the Ateneo Graduate School of Business (AGSB).

He was a consultant of Secretary Deles in 2003 during her first term as PAPP. And when she resigned in 2005 along with the Hyatt 10, he went with her. When she was reappointed by President Aquino, he was persuaded to return to OPAPP this time as undersecretary and executive director.

But his true passion is teaching. “You should try it. There is a certain satisfaction that you get. You will see that there is a light bulb. You see enlightenment in the students’ faces, eyes, but they don’t realize it. It’s priceless. And you hope that that kind of enlightenment will somehow

Usec. Louie delivers a speech at the Sajahatra Cash-for-Work Program in Polomolok, South Cotabato.


serve them for a long time, beyond the time they spent in class.”

“If there’s one thing I would go back to after June 2016, it’s teaching.”

Losing his father and finding Paolo

At 52, Usec. Montalbo is the proud father to a three-year-old boy, Paolo Jose Montalbo.

“Three or four years before I got Paolo, the desire to be a parent was very strong. Then it died down,” Montalbo says, recalling the circumstances surrounding his adoption of Paolo.

He thought that was the end of his desire to be a father until his life partner told him about an abandoned month-old baby being put up for adoption. His partner wanted to know if he wanted to see the infant.

There had been previous attempts to get him to look at abandoned children. “Ang problema (ko) pag nakita ko, baka di na ako makaatras, gusto ko nang iuwi (My problem was, I feared that when I saw the child, I wouldn’t be able to back out. I would want to bring it home).” So he refused to be coaxed into seeing abandoned babies. Until this one.

“For some reason, without thinking, I said yes to this one.” It was love at first sight. “The moment I saw him, gusto ko nang iuwi (I wanted to bring him home).”

He called his friends, telling them about the baby, saying he wanted to bring him home right away. They had to tell him to calm down and follow the necessary process for adoption. “All my friends thought

I was crazy, trying to adopt a baby at my age. I was 50 years old then,” Usec. Montalbo says.

Initially, he didn’t know how to tell his 84-year-old mother about his plan to adopt the baby. And when he finally told her, she tried to dissuade him from adopting the child, telling him to just support the kid’s upbringing and education.

“Gusto mo bang makita (Do you want to see him)?” he asked her. She did, and like her son, she was smitten the moment she saw Paolo.

Usec. Montalbo believes that “in a cosmic sense” a part of his dad’s soul, who passed away a year before he got Paolo, came back to him through the baby.

“I got Paolo a year after my Dad died. Nung nagdesisyon ako, pumunta ako kay Papa (When I made my decision, I went to see my father). I remember going to see my Dad, at Loyola (Memorial Park).”

He asked for his father’s intervention in the process of adopting Paolo, believing that it was his father who brought Paolo to him. Now that

he himself is a father, Montalbo understands the depth of the relationship between parent and child.

“Now that I am raising Paolo, because I’m very physical (affectionate) with him, I realized that our body remembers all the times our parents held us. It becomes a part of our DNA, our senses. And when that part is taken away from us, our whole being reacts. Because our contact with our parents is very physical fromthe moment we are born.”

Parting words

Usec. Montalbo believes that taking risks is part of growth. To OPAPP employees, especially those who have not been long in peace work, he says:

“Learn as much as you can. Never be complacent or comfortable in what you do. You’re lucky to be exposed to this kind of work. Take risks, especially while you are young. If you don’t, something gets lost. The last thing you want to do is stay in a job because you are comfortable in it.”

FATHER AND SON: Usec. Louie and Paolo


TO MAKE THE NATIONAL ACTION Plan for Women, Peace and Security (NAP WPS) work, Undersecretary Gettie Sandoval drew not only on her experience as teacher and human rights lawyer, but also on the philosophy of Po and the cast of Kung Fu Panda, of which she is a fan.

In many ways, she was venturing into uncharted territory. When she took on the task of drawing

Undersecretary Maria Cleofe Gettie C. SandovalNo secret ingredient

By KRIS LANOT LACABA

up the NAP WPS in 2010, she knew that a lot needed to be done. If the implementation of the plan succeeded, it would have a far-reaching impact on the lives of women and children living in conflict-affected areas all over the Philippines.

Gettie was not about to let a significant document on women and peace get lost in a bureaucracy that can be unwieldy and impossible to

work with. If there was something she learned from Kung Fu Panda, it is that “there is no secret ingredient”.

There is no secret ingredient that sustains Sandoval in her work; there is only her dedication to the causes she chooses. What she brings to her work is her lifelong experience defending human rights, drafting policy that protects the welfare of women, and working with government and non-government agencies in lobbying for legislation on women and peace. There is no secret sauce. Realizing the NAP WPS

“It was civil society... that initiated the consultation process” on the NAP WPS, says Sandoval, and its gains need to be safeguarded for future generations. When the Philippine government adopted its NAP WPS in 2010, the Philippines became the first country in Asia to come up with a national policy following United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325

MOVERS AND SHAKERS


and 1820 on women, peace and security. Under the leadership of OPAPP Secretary Teresita Quintos Deles and Usec. Sandoval, the NAP WPS has become the backbone of the implementation of the government’s gender and development policy across the country. In a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Deles recounted how the NAP was designed to “make a difference you can feel on your skin”.

“We must ensure that the NAP we have begun to weave will endure... Its strands, emanating from strategic programs of national and local implementing agencies, must be strengthened and enhanced in both protecting and empowering women toward bringing all Philippine internal armed conflicts to a peaceful, just, and lasting end,” Deles said.

The Jesuit call to adventure

Maria Cleofe Gettie Catapang Sandoval was born in Batangas City in 1964 to lawyer Bienvenido Sandoval and schoolteacher Juanita Bautista Catapang.

Gettie is the fifth child in a brood of six, which includes her brothers Paquito and Ted, and her sisters Irene, Sylvia and Rosette. Her name “Cleofe” was taken from the calendar of saints, while “Gettie” was suggested by a cousin. “I don’t know where she got the idea. I just know that ‘Gettie’ was Jose Rizal’s nickname for his sweetheart Gertrude Beckett, and Gettie Beckett’s nickname for Rizal was ‘Pettie’ for Pepe.”

The Sandoval family moved to Metro Manila when the eldest

son Paquito went to college in the city. Gettie enrolled at the public elementary school in Barangay Masambong in Quezon City where she became the school’s top student. For high school, she went to Siena College of Quezon City.

She describes her childhood as one of “order”. “My family was not authoritarian, but I did live a life of discipline... As students, our duty was to study. ‘Walang bulakbol (No playing hookey),’ that was the first rule. The second rule was that we must pray, and not just on Sundays.” She recalls, “Siena was a Dominican school on Del Monte Avenue, right across the film studios of FPJ Productions. Our school used to ask permission to use its basketball court where we’d see the brawny actors and stuntmen who played villains in FPJ action movies.”

Gettie thinks it must have been at Siena where the seeds of social consciousness were first planted in her. The school would take its students out to conduct outreach projects. “We went to poor communities, we played with the children. Nothing extraordinary... Even around Siena, there were urban poor communities. We’d go there on Saturdays.”

The Ateneo Economics Department (where she went to college on partial scholarship) was the belly of the whale for Gettie. As a student, she joined a number of protest rallies after Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated. “I never experienced being tear- gassed, though. The Jesuit priests and seminarians always cordoned us off,” Gettie says.

When she graduated with a degree in economics, Gettie could have gone on to join the corporate world as many of her classmates did. But when the Jesuit Volunteer Program (JVP) beckoned in 1985, she jumped at the chance to become a schoolteacher in the municipality of Pinamalayan in Oriental Mindoro. She remembers saying during her interview for the JVP that she did not want to teach math. “Well,” she says, “I was assigned to teach world history... and business math.”

It was her first time away from home for an extended period and it gave her a chance to think about her future. “I was expected by my parents to go to law school but I was having second thoughts.”

Says Gettie, JVP “gave me many lessons and it was my first awakening to who I was. I had a community, my [teaching] partner, and other Jesuit volunteers in Mindoro to share the ups and downs. It is an experience that I am still processing, but it is one which makes me smile, cry, and cringe up to now.”

Law school

She did go to law school at the Ateneo. It was at this time, according to a colleague, that Gettie, a fan of PBA (Philippine Basketball Association) games, would stand at tricycle terminals munching peanuts while watching the games on a TV set in the sidewalk.

In 1990, while still a senior, she began working at Saligan (Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal or Alternative Legal Assistance Center), which offers legal assistance to groups and individuals, with a focus


on public interest law, promoting legal rights for women, indigenous peoples, the urban poor, the labor sector, human rights groups and environmental groups.

She spent 13 years in Saligan, developing and implementing programs, working mainly on women’s concerns.

She had many colorful adventures litigating and mediating labor disputes. “In the course of my work, we helped unions in collecting bargaining negotiations. We even joined them on the picket line during union strikes,” says Gettie.

She taught medical jurisprudence at the Ateneo de Manila School of Medicine and Public Health from 2009 to 2012. She became associate director for operations of the Leaders for Health Program of the Ateneo Graduate School. It was at this time that she met Louie Montalbo, who was then the Ateneo Graduate School’s associate director for academics,

now undersecretary and executive director at OPAPP.

Moving forward methodically

When she first took on government work, Gettie met with challenges that she faced methodically. In 1998, when she was appointed chief of staff of Abanse! Pinay party list, she pushed for pro-women laws at the House of Representatives. Although the bills she worked on were not passed during her year-long stint with Abanse! Pinay, Gettie says, “Eventually, Anti-Violence Against Women and the Children and Anti-Trafficking [bills] would become law.” She and her team also tried to “infuse gender into other bills, so part of the work was to look at existing bills and see the gender dimension.”

She recalls, “It was an interesting experience, highly educational because I got to see up close how legislators work. It was helpful when I did other legislative work later.”

In 2001, she joined the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) as director for sectoral policy where she needed to build consensus among various government agencies. She describes her work in NAPC: “I talked to all of the different agencies, made them come together, identified issues and worked on them, and made the agencies come to an agreement.”

It was at the NAPC where she got to work with Secretary Deles who was then its lead convenor. Deles and Sandoval were also together as members of the women’s group Pilipina that drafted and lobbied for the passage by Congress of the Magna Carta of Women, which sought to protect the rights of Filipino women, particularly those in the marginalized sectors.

Secretary Deles recruited Sandoval to work at OPAPP in October 2010. “I was initially brought in as a consultant to review the NAP WPS, which was initiated by civil society advocates... Sec. Ging (Deles) asked me to take a look at it... I had to review the NAP realistically and ask whether government can deliver what the document promised within the set time frame.”

Conceptualizing, initiating and running a new program was not new to Gettie. “But if anything was different with my work in the NAP WPS—and if there was anything about it that would cause me to hesitate or worry—it was the scale.”

The National Action Plan was a real challenge. “Here we were talking to the whole bureaucracy in all regions of the country, as we focused on all the conflict-affected areas. We were given an X

Usec. Gettie at the opening of the training of the Cordillera Forum for Peace and Development (formerly CPLA) integrees in Gamu, Isabela, June 29, 2013.


amount of time... and there had to be some sort of output considering the difficulties of working within the bureaucracy (given both its adaptability and limits).”

A political sense

Gettie began working full time at OPAPP in 2012, initially as assistant secretary for policy, and later as undersecretary for programs. She is now tasked to supervise the implementation of Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan, or PAMANA.

She also implements the government’s peace agreements with the Cordillera Bodong Administration-Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CBA-CPLA) and the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Pilipinas/Revolutionary Proletarian Army/Alex Boncayao Brigade-Tabara Paduano Group (RPMP/RPA/ABB-TPG).

Currently, it is the implementation of the negotiated peace agreement with the CPLA that she finds rather grueling. “We’re talking to less than a thousand former combatants, but I’ve been working on this agreement since it was signed in 2011.” She notes that the dynamics among former combatants and tribal elders are complex and challenging.

“You cannot just be a manager, you cannot just be a supervisor,” she says of her work. “You can be as hands-on as you want, but you have to have a political sense in reading the dynamics of the people involved, with some of these dynamics informed by traditional indigenous systems.”

Letting go

All her adult life, Gettie has sought spiritual guidance from her teachers and mentors. She has been attending annual recollections during Holy Week since she was in senior high school. “Every time something is happening in my life and I need to think about it, I go to a silent place. Kailangan ko tumahimik, magdasal, at mag-muni-muni (I need to be silent, pray, and reflect). ”

Her schedule has been so hectic, she has been forced to temporarily stop going on her annual spiritual retreats. Still, she finds the time to meet with family, old friends, and former mentors who serve as her support system.

“Even when everyday life seems to be full of chaos, I can rely on my friends to help me maintain my sanity.” Gettie says. “Being with them is how I keep my inner peace, just as in Kung Fu Panda, Shifu found inner peace after speaking with his master Oogway.”

She also finds time to care for plants and look after her dog, of which she is a reluctant owner. “My sister Rosette asked me to get her a puppy. My sister stays in Toronto, Canada, and she never came home to pick it up. So the dog stays with me.”

And here she is applying another lesson from Kung Fu Panda. Even if her life seems to be one of discipline, Gettie says she has learned to “let go of the illusion of control.”

“I’m now a reluctant surrogate dog mother,” says Sandoval. “So you

give me something to do, you can be sure that I will take it seriously. By the way, the dog’s name is Charlie Brown. Because she’s brown.”

Gettie recounts that Charlie Brown grew aggressive when she had her puppies. “Charlie gave birth alone to eight puppies, two of which died. She was distressed. When I came home, she was already done. I could not get near her. She grew angry when people came to look at her. She bit me twice.”

She considered finding Charlie Brown a new home and family. But after a while, the dog “went back to her old sweet self” so she decided to keep her.

Gettie says that when her term at OPAPP ends, there will be people whom she will miss working with. “There are people I’ve met who are professional, good people.”

For now, she has no clear “post- OPAPP plans”. She says, “My line is development work. For now, I am not inclined to go back to court, so I need to find some other use for my lawyering skills. I am not averse to living in the province or in another country. I need to think about [my dog] Charlie Brown.” One thing is sure. Gettie will be bringing with her many valuable insights from working in government. “I think it will take me another lifetime to be able to unravel all that these past five years have brought to my life.”

She recalls how it has taken her years to process her time as a Jesuit Volunteer, to realize that she needed all that experience.

“God will not give me useless days,” she says. “Now I know. Let’s see.”


HOW DO YOU keep the faith with the peace process? Undersecretary for Programs for Bangsamoro Jose Iribani Lorena – who has had the rare opportunity of working for both the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the government panels on the Bangsamoro peace table keeps the faith by “looking back to the thesis that all men [and women] are good; and since they are good, they also look for good in society”.

Christian-Muslim roots

Joe Lorena was born in the island municipality of Tapul, Sulu. His grandfather, a teacher from Bicol, was one of the first Christians to arrive and permanently settle on the island, having been a Thomasite. His grandmother was a resident belonging to the predominantly-Muslim Hui people from China, who settled in the area, given its strategic location and vibrant economy then, especially the fishing industry.

“Tapul was very peaceful; surrounded by beautiful beaches. When the Muslim-Hui arrived, they were attracted by the beauty of the place and the people there,” he said. It was a tolerant society – the elders did not

Undersecretary Jose I. LorenaKeeping the faith

By PAOLO C. CANSINO

require his grandparents to convert to the other’s creed. Such respect for freedom of religion became a precedent for the succeeding generations, who are a mixture of Muslims and Christians by choice.

Joe studied in Sulu High School, which was the only one in the province at the time, graduating valedictorian (Director Yusop “Jake” Paraji of OPAPP PAMANA Mindanao was salutatorian). “That is why I got Jake,” he said.

His alma mater produced some of the key actors across the spectrum

of the conflict in Mindanao, such as Rear Admiral Romulo Espaldon, MNLF leader Nur Misuari, former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Governor Parouk Hussin, and Abu Sayyaf commander Umbra “Dr. Abu” Jumdail.

For many years now, Joe has served as president of its alumni association. He laughs, “May alumni homecoming. Sa MNLF, may nag-a-attend. Iyong iba, hindi nakakapunta kasi baka hulihin ni general (When there is an alumni homecoming, there are attendees even from the MNLF. But others are not able to attend because they

MOVERS AND SHAKERS


might be arrested by the general in attendance).”

Were it not for his mother’s objection, Joe would have studied in England upon the invitation of his grand uncle, who was then chair of the United Sabah National Organization (USNO). Instead, he was sent to study closer to home in Manila.

At this point, the economy of Tapul and the rest of Sulu were already suffering from policies of the Marcos’ regime that tightened the free movement of peoples and goods between the Sulu archipelago and nearby territories. “Nawalan na ng livelihood, kaya iyong iba kumapit na sa patalim (People lost their livelihood, so there were those who clung to the knife’s edge).”

The Jabidah Massacre (1968) and the Burning of Jolo (1974) plunged its peoples into decades of conflict. “Tapul became a center of conflict. Di na nakabalik sa peace. Marami ang di na nakapag-aral, namatay ang parents nila (Tapul became a center of conflict. It did not return to peace anymore. Many were not able to go to school. Their parents were killed).”

“I think what drew the line – intentional or not – was the declaration of Martial Law.” Usec. Joe adds.

Student activism

In Manila, Usec. Joe intended to study journalism as a university scholar at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. It was the height of student activism and ideological curiosity in the university. But heeding his mother’s wish for him to become a surgeon, he pursued pre-med at the

University of Santo Tomas (UST), also as a university scholar. His appetite for writing landed him a column in The Varsitarian.

At the time, leftist groups were actively recruiting young people to fight against the excesses of the Marcos regime and Usec. Joe joined the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK) and participated in the First Quarter Storm. With the government crackdown on student organizations, he left Manila for Mindanao where he was eventually captured and detained.

“Iyong parents ko, may pagka-aktibista rin. Di naman ako pinagalitan kasi may freedom of choice naman kami (My parents were also activists. I was not scolded since they respected my freedom of choice).”

He had to stop pursuing his medical studies after he was accidentally hit with a bayonet in one eye during ROTC training. “Sinabihan ako ng doctor na hindi na perfect ang vision ko. I cannot be a surgeon. Wala akong ginawa for one year kasi, wala, naghi-heal (I was told by my doctor that my vision would no longer be perfect. So I could not be a surgeon. I did not do

anything for a year because my eye was healing).”

He finally earned his undergraduate degree in economics in 1978 from Ateneo de Zamboanga University (ADZU) where he was also associate editor of The Beacon, the official student publication.

Usec. Joe spent the next few years teaching econometrics at ADZU and rising in the ranks in regional government offices, such as the Ministry of Public Information–Region IX, the Department of Interior and Local Government–Region IX, and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB)–Region IX.

An accidental law student

He pursued a Master of Arts degree in Public Administration (MPA) at the Western Mindanao State University (WMSU). His thesis topic was on political autonomy, which, at the time, was not yet a mainstream topic in political conversation. Since the nature of the study would require reading related laws, Joe realized the necessity of being mentored by a lawyer. So he went to his uncle, who was a former fiscal and judge,

Usec. Joe at the Tripartite Review of the implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement, January 26, 2016 in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.


hoping to be his mentee. But his uncle refused to support him and his graduate studies; instead, he offered to sponsor Usec. Joe’s books and expenses if he studied law. As a compromise, Usec. Joe enrolled at the WMSU College of Law while he pursued his MPA, with the end goal of getting just enough background in related laws to help him write his thesis, and collect his allowance from his uncle.

To his surprise, he topped the law entrance exams. “Ang advantage ko lang, voracious reader ako. Nagba-Bible reading nga ako sa UST (My only advantage was that I am a voracious reader. I even read the Bible when I was still in UST),” he claims, aside from reading the four holy books of Islam, among others.

On his second year in law school, there was no turning back. Although he had already withdrawn from MPA studies, Usec. Joe was working full time as head of the region’s HURB, and was a full-time husband and father. Usec. Joe completed his law studies, saying he survived law school because of maturity, focus and time management. After evening class, he would take his dinner and

go to bed; wake up at three in the morning to do a 30-minute workout, then study until he had to go to work at eight in the morning. After five in the afternoon, he would go to school, and the routine was repeated. Law professors grilled him, although very rarely, during class recitations, despite his relatively high position in government. When he was preparing for the bar exams, he collected the review materials in Manila and flew back to Zamboanga where he did self-review. He passed the bar and took his oath as a lawyer in 1998.

The MNLF peace panel

In 1992, Usec. Joe received a message from then President Fidel V. Ramos whose government was preparing to engage the MNLF in peace negotiations. The President wanted him to join the MNLF peace panel because his knowledge of government and economics, as well as his network would be beneficial to the peace talks. This was welcomed by MNLF Chair Nur Misuari, his town-mate in the island of Tapul, and schoolmate at Sulu High School.

However, it was impractical for Usec. Joe for two reasons: first, he had to

resign from his government post; second, being “marked” as part of the MNLF would destroy his career path. In the end, however, he responded to the call of duty to serve the peace process in the capacity that suited him best as chair of the Committee on Economics of the MNLF peace panel from 1992 to 1996.

Serving the ARMM

When the ARMM was established following the gains of the GRP-MNLF peace talks, Chair Misuari, as regional governor, appointed Joe as secretary. But he served only for five days. “I was an activist, so I was opposing him. I resigned because of conflict in principle,” he explained. The incident caused a crisis within the MNLF, with many members supporting Usec. Joe. Eventually, the rift ended and months before the year 2000, he was back in the ARMM leadership as the region’s concurrent labor secretary and attorney general.

Many of the legal controversies he handled as ARMM’s attorney general revolved around the relationship between the central government and the autonomous region such as clarifying that the ARMM’s police

Usec. Joe meeting with senior MNLF leaders during the Zamboanga siege, September 2013.


force is under and part of the Philippine National Police; changing the title “solicitor general” to “attorney general” when referring to the ARMM since there cannot be two solicitors general in the country; and clarifying the extent of powers granted by law to the ARMM with respect to the conduct of regional elections.

Joining OPAPP

It was in 2006 when then Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP) Jesus Dureza recruited Usec. Joe as a consultant at OPAPP. Under this arrangement, he still had time to teach law and economics in Zamboanga City. Later on, he accepted other consultancies, such as adviser to Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa, Jr. on counterterrorism, on which he had trained in the US after the 9/11 attack.

In 2012, PAPP Teresita Quintos Deles invited him to serve as undersecretary for programs for Bangsamoro, particularly to work on the OIC-GPH-MNLF Tripartite Review Process on the 1996 Final Peace Agreement. Again, this was impractical since he would have to drop his teaching and his consultancies but he heeded the call to bring peace to the Bangsamoro, which was his dream even as a young boy in Tapul, Sulu.

Joe was a member of the technical working group on power-sharing, which helped shape the Annex on Power-Sharing in the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro signed in 2014. He was also crucial as a resource person during the siege of Zamboanga by the MNLF in 2013, as well as the legislative hearings on the proposed

Bangsamoro Basic Law. “My hope is your generation, the next generation, will no longer have to tackle this”, he sighs. “Masyado nang mahaba (It has been too protracted).”

Caring nature

Being away from home and having constant meetings even on weekends have not prevented Joe from keeping up with his family. No matter how busy the day is, he always finds time to give his four children a call, and ensure that he maintains the delicate balance between mentoring and allowing them the space to make their own decisions.

Aside from his official duties, Joe looks after the well-being of his staff. At a public consultation in Iloilo in December 2014, he paid for a room so the team from OPAPP could rest before the event while he chose to just rest on a chair. He also encourages his employees to go on vacation or work in a place and manner that enhance their productivity. He says this is his way of paying forward the generosity of his former bosses when he was a young employee struggling to chart his career path.

“Develop the potential of your staff to achieve the lifetime dreams and visions of the individual,” he explained. “If you do not help them develop to assume a greater role in society, they can end up being a problem.”

“Because all men and women are good”

On the events and issues related to the Bangsamoro peace process, Usec. Joe’s responses normally refer to his personal encounters and his

first-hand evaluation of the political situation. Aside from his deep personal link to the peace process, he surmises that it is probably his candor that has made the different sides in this peace table seek his advice.

Against this backdrop, and with the challenges surrounding his work, he remains firm in keeping the faith in the peace process.

“My hope is that the process will continue, because all men and women are good. Little by little, consensus will be built. That is why I am not losing hope in men and women. God is peace, from God comes peace, and all humanity is mandated to walk the path of peace.”

Looking forward

After almost 10 years of service in OPAPP, and his accumulated decades of service to the Bangsamoro peace process, Usec. Joe is thinking of retiring from government work. He says he is starting to feel the physical toll that comes with age.

After the end of the Aquino administration in June, Usec. Joe plans to start writing his memoir, which he says is a duty, especially towards the next generation who must take on the task of building peace. “Mahirap iyong gaya naming nakadaan sa lahat ng negotiations, implementation, matatanda na. (We who have been part of all the negotiations and implementation are old already).”

He is also looking forward to teaching law again, spending more time with his family in the farm, reading and reviewing his know-how in statistics, and catching up with old friends in alumni gatherings.


IN THE THREE YEARS since her appointment as assistant secretary for policy on January 13, 2013, at OPAPP, Jennifer Santiago Oreta has simply been known as Asec. Apple. And at seminars, roundtable discussions, and workshops where she presides, one of her favorite opening lines is, “Let’s drop our titles. I’m Apple.” Her official stationery has a “PhD” after her name, but she gets uneasy when she is addressed as “Dr. Oreta”, except in a classroom or a purely academic setting. To her staff who have known her the longest, she is just “Boss Apple”. But don’t get this wrong. Whenever she feels that others are pushing their weight (or titles) around, she doesn’t hesitate to invoke her awesome credentials.

On the 6th floor of the building are several open doors, the first of which leads to her office. There is neither nameplate, nor title on the door. Her door is actually open more often than the pantry and the comfort room. The only time her door is closed is when she has an important meeting. Her room is actually often used for general assemblies of her unit, or a holding room for guests. On the meeting table is a jar of candies and a box of facial tissue. Help yourself!

By GONZALO GALANG

Asec. Apple has an open door for practically everyone, but she clearly has a soft spot for the “most vulnerable groups” (MVGs). She is most accommodating when her guests are former rebels (FRs), members of indigenous groups (IPs) and others of similar circumstance, including civil society organization (CSO) partners.

This openness to the MVGs and CSOs reflects her professional upbringing. Prior to entering government, she was immersed in the NGO-PO world and the academe where she fully intends to return when her current appointment ends.

Street parliamentarian

She began her professional life at the Social Development Index (or INDEX), an NGO catering to the marginalized sectors. Her first official designation at INDEX was “advocacy officer” of the Education Reform Bloc (ERB), a network of professionals pursuing reforms in tertiary education. It was a posh title for what was actually a one-woman show on behalf of the network. She did research and converted them into policy recommendations which, once approved by the leaders of the group, she typed, photocopied, delivered and lobbied for in Congress

Assistant Secretary Jennifer Santiago OretaPraxis in practice

MOVERS AND SHAKERS


and at the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DepEd).

In that world, Asec. Apple developed into a dyed-in-the-wool street parliamentarian with strong opinions on social and political issues, a trait that first sprung when she was a Political Science student at De La Salle University (DLSU) from 1985 to 1988, and as a student volunteer at its Social Action Office. Here, she honed her skills in “UF” or united front work. (The current colloquial terms for “UF” are “networking” and “coalition building”.)

She marched and shouted until her voice became hoarse, for various causes including agrarian reform, the removal of the US military bases and the Magna Carta for Students’ Rights and Welfare. She laments that recent rallies by moderate forces seem to lack sting and their chants lack rhythm.

After her stint at INDEX, Asec. Apple got her first government job in 1990, in the staff of Jose Luis “Chito” Gascon who was Sectoral Representative for the Youth at the House of Representatives. Chito was in the first batch of sectoral representatives, who were then appointed by the President. (It was part of a system that was the precursor of the current party list representation in Congress.) This job, and a brief stint in the office of Sen. Raul Roco, gave Asec. Apple her baptism on the difficulties in pursuing a reformist agenda in a Congress dominated by transactional politics.

In the midst of her political engagements, she became an active member of Pandayan para sa Sosyalistang Pilipinas, a democratic socialist coalition. Its members come from a broad spectrum of

the marginalized sectors—women, students and out-of-school youth, labor, urban poor, farmers and fisherfolk. It was in Pandayan where Asec. Apple says she attained ideological and political maturity.

In 1992, she was invited to be the director of DLSU’s Center for Social Concern and Action (COSCA), an organization she had volunteered for in college. In COSCA, her foremost mentors were the late Bro. Cecilio “Ceci” Hojilla, FSC, who imbibed in her and other volunteers the spirit of service and compassion, a faith that does justice, and the value of reflection; and Bro. Benildo Feliciano, FSC, who taught her the intricacies of running an organization with professionalism, respect and integrity. These two Lasallian Brothers made a lasting impression on her and molded her professional and spiritual values.

Matching skills with needs

As director of COSCA, Asec. Apple pioneered the “matching” of the respective colleges’ academic discipline with the actual needs of communities. For instance, the DLSU-College of Engineering was “matched” with a request for the installation of a micro-hydro power plant in remote communities in Bangued, Abra.

Selected mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering students together with their teachers, carefully planned a micro-hydropower plant to service a Tingguian community in Bangued. After five years, the plans they made were used to produce three micro-hydropower plants, servicing three communities, each with the capacity to dry palay and corn during the rainy season, and with enough power for a black-and-

white TV, an electric fan, and low-wattage computers. A cooperative was organized for each of these communities to maintain the project.

Another accomplishment of COSCA was the institutionalization of the 16 hours required community service with the marginalized sectors under the Religion 4 subject of the Religious Studies Department. The project was a tall order – from convincing the university administrators to accept the proposal, reviewing the Religion subject to fit the 16-hour community service requirement, preparing communities to host an average of 300 students per trimester, and preparing the logistical requirements. But her team was able to pull it off.

In 2001, she joined the faculty of the Ateneo de Manila University, a necessary shift brought about by the need to balance career and family life. But she continued her CSO-volunteer work, primarily in Pax Christi-Pilipinas, the International Peace Research Association Foundation, and the Philippine Action Network to Control Arms (PHILANCA).

She wrote numerous articles and gave lectures on the importance of reining in loose and unlicensed firearms and advocating the passage of laws on gun control. Her advocacy work led to constant interaction with officials from the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), which has served her well in her work in OPAPP.

Student volunteer

During her student and NGO days, Asec. Apple got her hands and clothes dirty helping out in OD or “operation dikit” where she pasted protest fliers and posters on


various social issues on public walls. As a student actively involved in DLSU-COSCA, she was an energetic volunteer at the office’s “cells” on fisherfolk and women, interacting with the fisherfolk of Laguna Lake.

Congresswoman Arlene “Kaka” Bag-ao, a partner in COSCA, was (and still is) one of her closest friends. Indeed, many of Asec. Apple’s closest friends are from COSCA and her NGO circles. Clearly, her social objectives intertwine with her socializing, establishing her identity as a well-rounded and “highly integrated” person.

Another of her “identities” which she has steadfastly held on to is that of a women’s rights advocate. Since her days as a student volunteer, she has championed women’s rights and equality in her social and professional involvements. At OPAPP, particularly close to her heart are the women former rebels who continue their personal struggles even long after they have left the movement. She has chided, even castigated, colleagues and subordinates who fail to use gender-sensitive language in their writing and oral discussions. In the family, she believes in the

equality of spouses in rearing the children, doing house chores and errands, and providing for the family.

Asec. Apple is highly acclaimed for her intellect, and as manager, for being a consensus builder. She listens to the inputs of every staff member before making decisions on policies concerning her unit. She trusts her staff to produce the unit’s mandated outputs and intervenes only when there are glaring missteps.

She is not one to withhold her admiration for good staff work, often exclaiming, “Ang galing ni Carla!” or “Ang galing ni Mic!” (referring to Carla Ravanes and Mic Espinas, her direct assistants).

She may be a consensus builder but she is firm when she makes a decision and, unless one comes up with a foolproof counter argument, her word is final. Her profuse praise for those who do well takes a 180-degree turn when she confronts subordinates whom she feels are not giving 100% or who get her instructions wrong. But rarely does Asec. Apple verbally and publicly berate her subordinates or others who cross her. Inspired by

the example of the late Sec. Jesse Robredo, she hardly raises her voice even when angry. Most often, she shows her displeasure by dabbing submitted work with remarks in red ink.

For all her professional achievements, Asec. Apple is quick to admit when she does not know enough about a new task assigned to her. When it is not within her area of expertise, she depends on her staff to provide inputs, especially those with academic or professional training on the matter, and decides on which plan will best conform to the overall OPAPP plan of action.

Both as a boss and as a person, she is extremely generous, regularly bringing pasalubong for the entire office after a trip out of town, whether personal or official. She also shares a large chunk of her blessings with victims of calamities and other persons in need.

Asec. Apple is married to Dr. Andy Oreta, a Professor of Civil Engineering at DLSU. Among all the jobs that keep her busy in a work day, what keeps her sane is being a hands-on mother to their two children.

Asec. Apple speaks at the inauguration of “Lakbay para sa Kapayapaan sa EDSA”, July 29, 2013.


“I WOULD START A FARM in my province,” Assistant Secretary Danilo Encinas says when asked what he would be doing if he decides to retire after more than four decades in government service. But even as he talks about dabbling in agriculture, one gets the impression that he does not really want to leave government altogether. Asec. Dan Encinas is still focused on uplifting the lives of others through government service.

Assistant Secretary Danilo L. Encinas or Asec. Dan as he is known to colleagues and staff at the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), has served five presidents in various capacities, from Corazon Aquino to Benigno S. Aquino III.

He earned a degree in Economics from San Beda College, Manila in 1974 after which he joined the government or the first time as a Senior Economic Development Specialist at the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA).

The call of People Power

Economics was not Dan’s first choice; he was, in fact, enrolled in the humanities at the Ateneo de Manila University but he transferred to San

By CHRISTINA LOREN UMALI

Beda College in Manila, where he obtained his degree in Economics.

In 1976, after working two years at NEDA, he enrolled at the Ateneo College of Law where he intended to focus on family relations but did not finish the course. Instead, he went to Yale University where he earned a diploma in Russian Studies. He later obtained a doctorate in Development Economics at Oxford University in London. After attending Oxford and Yale, he was offered a teaching post in Cornell University in New York. So, while waiting for word from the World Bank’s Young Economists Program where he had applied, he was encouraged to teach.

Asec. Dan was a visiting lecturer at Cornell University in 1987 when President Cory Aquino dropped by to give a lecture. He was part of a group at Cornell that established a course on the Cory administration which was developed due to the interest in the Philippines’ People Power revolution. The course was launched with President Cory in attendance accompanied by the late Senator Joker Arroyo, who happened to be the Encinas’ family lawyer. Joker asked Dan what he was doing in New York when he could be serving the government back home. It was Arroyo who convinced him to join the Cory administrationas a volunteer.

Asssistant Secretary Danilo L. EncinasIn the service of five presidents

MOVERS AND SHAKERS


Government service is in Dan’s blood. Both his grandfathers were involved in politics. His father was elected congressman, and he had an uncle who was governor. Another relative on his mother’s side also became a congressman. But what motivated Dan to come back and serve the government was the magic of People Power.

At Cornell, he was proud to share with the students how the Filipino people stood up to a dictator on principle. “After People Power, people abroad gave us Filipinos special attention. They congratulated us when they learned we were Filipinos.” According to Dan, being Filipino became a feather in his cap.

Joker Arroyo assigned him to President Cory’s Presidential Management Staff (PMS). Working for the Cory administration was very prestigious; most of the staff at PMS were volunteers who came from good families. When it was time for President Cory to step down, seven of the volunteers were introduced to incoming President Fidel V. Ramos who requested them to stay and serve in his administration.

Early government work

Asec. Dan’s formal employment in government began in 1992 at the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) of the Ramos administration. President Ramos planned to pursue the peace process and created an interagency body, known as the Technical Committee for the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army/National Democratic Front (CPP/NPA/NDF) negotiating panel. To ensure that the other government agencies would follow the Panel’s orders, President Ramos assigned Dan, representing the Office of the President, as head of the GPH Panel’s Technical Committee.

At that time, the panel for CPP/NPA/NDF talks headed by Ambassador Howard Q. Dee, reported directly to the President, with the support of the Technical Committee. The Technical Committee created a sub-cabinet committee specifically for the peace process with the CPP/NPA/NDF. Structurally, the panel could summon the secretaries of the different agencies and ask for the support it needed.

When President Ramos’ term ended, Dan continued to work for President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, as part of PMS. There came a time when he wanted to quit due to issues he had about practices that he could not accept. But Ambassador Dee advised against it. He told Dan to think about the person who would possibly replace him. Would that person do a good job? Dan stayed on to protect his post and the good work that had already been accomplished.

In 1999, at the age of 44, Asec. Dan was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. But this did not stop him from continuing his work in government, In fact, it inspired him to go on, and he began to think of it not only as a job but a mission. After undergoing surgeries and chemotherapy, he was under observation for two to three years before he was declared cancer-free.

Take two

He gradually returned to government service during the Arroyo administration. Aside from heading of the Technical Committee for the CPP/NPA/NDF talks, Dan was appointed undersecretary at the Department of Agrarian Reform to assist then DAR Secretary Hernani Braganza. In 2004, he decided to run for Congress representing the Second District of Sorsogon, thinking that it might be his calling. He won the ballot but not the position; his opponent was somehow magically proclaimed before the counting was completed. But Dan did not bother to pursue his case before the House Electoral Tribunal.

After the debacle, he returned to the academe. “It was a rejuvenating experience,” Dan says. “When you teach, you are actually

Asec. Dan consolidates the peace constituency beyond the peace process in Mulanay, Quezon.


the one learning, especially since I encouraged my students to discuss and argue. In the academe, you are in the loop of new ideas. It is a good sanctuary, it’s not taxing or exacting.”

In 2007, he returned to Malacañang as undersecretary at the Office of the Presidential Adviser for New Government Centers. In 2008, Dan was appointed undersecretary at the Office of the Cabinet Secretary.

When President Benigno S. Aquino assumed office in June 2010, Dan continued to head the Technical Committee based in OPAPP. In 2014, he was appointed Assistant Secretary for Closure Programs with the Cordillera Bodong Administration-Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CBA-CPLA) and the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Pilipinas/Revolutionary Proletarian Army/Alex Boncayao Brigade-Tabara Paduano Group (RPMP/RPA/ABB-TPG) peace tables.

Serving five presidents

How has Asec. Dan managed to stay in government service, serving five

presidents with diverse personalities and work styles? Aside from the sense of belonging, his objective has always been to assist in the transition from one administration to the next. “If you find weaknesses in the old administration, you try to correct it in the next. The same is true of good practices. You try to transition them to the next government. You try to input your learnings in policy.”

For Dan, work in the government is good, “especially since you get to meet people who inspire you, who are well meaning.” He cannot imagine working in the private sector serving private interests. “When you work for the government, you serve the people and at the end of the day you are happy because you have advanced one good thing for the people.”

When he retires to his farm in Sorsogon, he intends to document narratives on community-based initiatives that could be used as models for development, “not necessarily on peace, but more on production of, for example, coconuts. You document the process and propagate the knowledge.”

He believes that agriculture in the Philippines has no other way to go but to boom. “Majority, if not all, of the surplus labor in the country is in agriculture. The agricultural sector has to be developed in order to provide jobs. Otherwise, the country’s unemployment rate will continue to rise.”

Dan eyes the youth as our country’s biggest untapped resource. For him, it’s a matter of knowing how to handle the youth so their ideas may bloom. He is dismayed that most young men and women leave the government disappointed.

“The system eats them up. They learn to accept that this is how the government works. In the end, you have a country that does not support the government fully.”

A laboratory for peace

Should his farming plans push through, Dan will offer his farm as a laboratory for bringing the peace process to farmers. “The NPA has only about three thousand members left. Why do we think that they are still strong? Because the community supports them. The community supports them because they are unemployed. If the community finds an opportunity in their sector, they will leave the NPA behind. I will open my farm to the government.”

Finally, he wants to thank the OPAPP staff and Secretary Deles who have contributed so much to the organization and who will leave at the end of this administration. “I want to thank them and tell them that they are appreciated. They should be able to move on and not feel that their efforts have been wasted. I do not want them to regret working for the government and end up refusing to offer more of their time and talent.”

Learning peace lessons at a PAMANA area in Mulanay, Quezon.


IN THE SUMMER OF 1988, Howard Cafugauan, fresh out from college, left his hometown of Davao City for Manila to experience what life in the big city is about. Later that year, he returned home, responding to a call from a classmate to work as an instructor in a local computer school.

Asec H, as he is known to his staff, is the Assistant Secretary (Asec.) for Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA) at the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP).

The soft-spoken Davaweño, seen by his colleagues as a hardworking and committed government official, has been with the agency for almost six years.

Nadia “Nadz” Lorena, Cafugauan’s assistant, says that her boss is easy to work with, someone who keeps his cool even in the toughest of situations. Outside of work, he is rather private, but takes time to socialize with his staff.

By LESTER NIERE

A tennis fan and a tech-enthusiast with a sweet tooth, Asec. Howard stresses the importance of balancing work and play. “We try to balance naman kapag sobra minsan iyong work. Kung may challenge sa isang aspekto ng buhay (We try to balance when the work becomes too heavy. When there are challenges in one aspect of your life) then you’ll draw strength from other aspects of your life.”

Cafugauan traversed numerous paths before working for OPAPP under the current administration.

Growing up in Mindanao

Born in Iloilo City on September 5, 1967, Asec. Howard grew up at the height of martial law era in the 1970s.

At an early age, he and his two older siblings were taught evacuation

Assistant Secretary Howard B. CafugauanStraight path to development

and peace

MOVERS AND SHAKERS


protocols by their parents while they lived in Cotabato City.

“Dinidikitan daw kami ng papel na nakalagay kung saan kami dapat papunta, sino-sino dapat ang contact. Tapos natutulog kami sa ground floor kasi nga may putukan sa likod ng bahay namin sa Cotabato. May tracer bullets na makikita mo pero siyempre bata ka pa noon, e, so wala ka masyadong understanding sa nangyayari (They would pin a piece of paper on our clothes that said where we would go, who we should contact. Then we would sleep on the first floor because there would be armed fighting behind our house in Cotabato. The bullets had tracers so we could see but as a kid we didn’t really understand what was going on).”

The city had checkpoints. Gunfire at night were regular occurences. He recalled telling his parents after a trip to Cotabato City in the mid-90s for work of seeing sandbagged checkpoints on the bridge to the city.

He also shared that he and his siblings left the city in the early 1970s in the middle of the school year due to the peace and order situation. “Kailangan namin mag-sort of evacuate to Iloilo kasi tumaas iyong tension and then bumalik kami sa Mindanao. (We had to evacuate to Iloilo when tensions rose, then we went back to Mindanao).” He eventually finished his primary and secondary education at the Ateneo de Davao University (ADDU) in 1980 and 1984 respectively. At the urging of his sister, Cafugauan decided to ride the then emerging information technology industry and took up Management Engineering course at ADDU, eventually finishing with a Mathematics degree in 1988.

It was during his high school and undergraduate years when he came to realize the state of the country under martial law. ADDU High School provided access to information on what was happening around the country. He also recalled looking forward to the Mr. and Ms. magazine special edition that came out at this time.

“I grew up at a time when mahirap isipin iyong ano ang gagawin mo after going to school. Pasalamat ka na lang na maka-graduate ka ng college. Basically ang sistema noon ay if you don’t work for the government, wala kang papasukan unless mayroon kang link sa private sector. Kung hindi man, magfa-farmer ka. So ano iyong options mo? Period na iyon (“I grew up at a time when you couldn’t not think of what work you can do after going to school. You were grateful you could graduate from college. Basically, if you didn’t work for government, you had few options unless you know someone in the private sector or else do farming).”

In college, Cafugauan had the chance to actively join the senatorial campaign for Butz Aquino in

1988. Together with friends, he distributed and posted campaign materials in a small Harabas reaching as far as Davao del Sur and North Cotabato. He recalled the apprehension of his friends when they reached North Cotabato.

“Siguro nag-aalala na sila. Ako hindi kasi lumaki ako doon. Parang noong time na iyon lagi nilang sinasabi na parang ‘huy, uwi na tayo kasi gabi na’ (They were probably concerned. I was not because I grew up there. At the time, they kept saying, ‘Hey, let’s go home because it’s dark).”

The path towards development

After finishing college, among the first jobs Cafugauan had was at a printing company followed and, later, as a computer instructor – then a novel profession – at a computer school in Davao City.

“Iyong period na iyon na hindi pa marami talaga nag co-computer, parang ahead of the curve ka, therefore iyon iyong parang logical thing to do (At the time, there were not many who were using the computer, so I was ahead of the curve. It seemed like the

Asec. Howard visits a project of the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo on Mainstreaming Peace and Development in Local Governance Programs in Sorsogon.


logical thing to do).” However, while his classmates pursued careers in information technology, he took on work that focused on development.

Shifting from information technology to development work was not difficult. In 1990, Cafugauan worked with BFAR Fisheries Sector Program, initially as computer operator in the planning unit then as technical staff for the aquaculture and credit components. He credits his supervisors for allowing this space for professional growth when he asked to be given technical assignments. “I approached our head and asked if there was something else I can do. So I was given other assignments. Basically, that’s how I started doing development work.”

He was also able to work with various government agencies and the private sector and experienced international cooperation work for the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) Working Groups on Agro-Industry and Fisheries Cooperation, which tried to spur development in Mindanao and Palawan. His work in the coastal

and fisheries sector continued with the Coastal Resource Management Project in 2003 and the Fisheries Improved for Sustainable Harvest (FISH) Project in 2006-2010.

Cafugauan’s work with OPAPP started in 2003 during the earlier term of Sec. Deles, upon the invitation of Asec. Rose Romero who was then chief of staff and whom he worked with in the National Anti-Poverty Commission. He recalled that when Asec. Rose told him that the work would focus on development in Mindanao and his task would be to look at economic programs suitable for or including Mindanao, Howard thought, “I could do that.” He grabbed the opportunity to be part of an organization that catered to the needs of conflict-affected areas in the country.

As head of the official development assistance and regional economic development unit, he was determined to provide social services to more stakeholders, using his experience in previous development jobs. With his background doing development work in Mindanao, he knew the area and the conditions well. In OPAPP, he

would be working on a broader level of development work the national level. “Iyon iyong parang nakaengganyo sa akin (That was what attracted me).”

Cafugauan again joined OPAPP in 2011 following the appointment by President Benigno S. Aquino III of Sec. Deles as PAPP. Asked why he chose to go back to OPAPP, Cafugauan said he saw the commitment of the present administration to the peace process and the development to the country.

Cafugauan is now assigned to oversee the implementation of PAMANA in different conflict-affected areas in the country. With almost two decades of development work under his belt, he says he has yet to get used to the deferential treatment he receives because of the position.

“Sabihin nating iba na yong trato dahil sa mayroon kang dalang posisyon. Mayroon lang times na natatawa pa rin ako (Let’s just say that there’s a different treatment because of the position that you carry in the government. There are times that I still find it amusing).”

As his term reaches its last stretch, Cafugauan hopes that, at the very least, he made an impact on some people’s lives. “Because PAMANA should serve as a complementary track to the talks, I hope we have helped the different peace tables. Hopefully, we have helped address the drivers of the conflict. Hopefully.”

For now, he hopes to get some rest after OPAPP, with the wish that the country continues to produce dedicated peace advocates in order to achieve the unity that the people deserve.

Asec. Howard examines provisions for a medical mission in Basilan on the second leg of the Peace Caravan, March 24, 2014.


“OF COURSE, it would be nice to be recognized for your hard work. But I will also be very happy being in the background knowing that I made things better.”

Inside an adjacent room to the Secretary’s office is a small glass table for four, two armchairs in black leather, and a lone seat in front of her desk where Assistant Secretary Rosalie Romero usually meets with staff and colleagues, or when her boss visits to talk.

The room is accessible through three doors: the first directly connects to the office of her boss, Secretary Ging Deles (or PAPP, as in Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process as she is more often called); the second faces the executive assistant to the PAPP who is on duty; and the third is for general admission, for OPAPP executives, staff and whoever else needs her attention.

Like the conductor of an orchestra, Rose Romero (or Asec. Rose), the PAPP’s chief-of-staff and head of the Communications Group, ensures

By MARC SIAPNO

that everything runs smoothly, if possible, like clockwork.

Through her years in OPAPP, Rose has earned a reputation of being stern and fierce. But she shrugs, “My job here is to make things work.”

“I am not that sociable,” she admits. “If they think I’m mataray, totoo naman iyon (intimidating, it’s true). If they think mahigpit [ako], mahigpit talaga (If they think I am strict, I really am). But I’m always fair.” Needless to say,

she does not beat around the bush. “When it comes to the job, I am really direct.”

Tiger days

Not too many people realize that the Rose the OPAPP knows today is a tamer one. Candidly, she says that 2010 to 2012 were her “tigre” (tiger) days. “When I point out a mistake, I just don’t point it out. I also explain why it is wrong so that, next time, they won’t repeat the mistake.”

Assistant Secretary Rosalie C. RomeroMaking things better

MOVERS AND SHAKERS


Rose was born in Angeles, Pampanga, in 1975. Her father was a carpenter; her mother, a dedicated homemaker. Raising five daughters, her parents were strict disciplinarians.

The matriarchal influence in the Romero household was strong. Rose, the youngest, would take turns with her sisters Melissa, Melinda, Cecil and Cristina helping in the kitchen. “The exercise paid off because it made us all good cooks,” Rose recalls.

Says Rose, “I love to cook because I also love to eat.” Friends and colleagues say that she cooks the most sumptuous prawns and crabs, but Rose explains that her favorite dish is pasta since it’s the easiest to prepare.

Baking, however, was not her thing. “We were poor, so we didn’t have the means to bake. The most that we could do was bake bibingka.”

Rose is also known in the office for her shoes. She says she inherited her fascination with high heels from her mother. She remembers walking in her mother’s shoes around the house when she was young. While she loves shoes, Rose says, “I am a cheap buyer.” Most of the time, the shoes she wears reflect her mood for the day.

It’s fate

Rose lived with her family in Pampanga until she graduated from high school. When it was time to take the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), she was told: “Ilagay na iyong pinakamabigat na course, pinakamagandang university (put the best course, the most prestigious university).” She really didn’t think much of it when she answered the NCEE form with Law for the course, and the Ateneo de Manila University for the school. A move that she would later consider prophetic.

But after high school, her dreams would have to wait. “My family’s situation back then did not provide the means for college.” Instead, she worked as a teacher at her cousin’s preschool in Parañaque.

She taught three- to four-year-old kids who all spoke good English. “Feeling ko mas natuto pa ako ng English sa pagtuturo sa kanila kaysa noong nasa grade school and high school ako. (I felt that I learned more to speak in English from teaching them than I did in grade school and high school),” she jokes.

“While I was teaching, I felt a very strong desire to go back to school. Sobrang inggit na inggit ako sa kanila (I envied them a lot)—whenever

I see them studying their lessons, or preparing for and taking their exams,” Rose recounts.

So Rose started to apply to universities for college – UP, UST, PUP, Ateneo. But she ended up completing only one application – Ateneo. “It was thanks to my sister, Melinda, who persisted in the application and submitted for me my requirements because I was then living and working in Parañaque.” As luck would have it, she received in January, 1993, her acceptance letter by the only university she applied to.

On her birthday, March 1, 1993, Rose received a surprise gift – a full scholarship grant from the Ateneo University.

“Ateneo literally changed my life, and brought me where I am today. I remember feeling awe and wonder every time I entered the gates and saw the blue eagle emblem. I was too poor and intimidated to dream of going to Ateneo, but it’s where fate brought me.”

In March, 1997, she donned the blue toga of Ateneo and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Legal Management. Remembering her NCEE form, it was prophetic indeed.

Rise quickly

A month after her graduation, Rose landed her first job as an assistant manager at a paper company. A year after, she was recruited to be the executive officer of a non-governmental organization working on climate change.

Two years after graduating from college, Rose was already implementing projects, convening meetings with professionals much older than her, and representing

Asec. Rose receives instructions from the PAPP at the opening of the formal talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF in Oslo, Norway, February 2011.


her organization and country in international conventions. Rose said that those were still her learning years, “I took leadership roles too early. I made mistakes those days and felt them too deeply.” It was at this time that she found the value of mentors for young professionals like her.

Humbled by her failures, she made sure she learned from her experience.

Meeting Sec. Ging

In 2001, Rose joined the Localization Unit of NAPC, where she met Sec. Ging, the agency’s lead convenor, for the first time. She was assigned the KALAHI Rural and KALAHI in Conflict-Affected Areas programs, which served as the precursors of the current KALAHI-CIDSS program of the DSWD. During this time, Rose would occasionally assist Sec. Ging during field visits and KALAHI activities.

Rose would take a break for two months in 2002, for a short study in the Netherlands. Upon her return in July, she was asked to be Sec Ging’s executive assistant to address the latter’s need for someone with technical capacity and skills. From business to environment to poverty reduction, Rose found herself entering a new field – peace.

She would continue working for and learning from Sec. Ging on peace through their stint in OPAPP, the Hyatt 10 resignation, and then in INCITEGov that Sec. Ging helped established. Political work

In 2007, Rose was recruited to join the team of then Senator Mar Roxas. She started as his HEA in the Senate,

then transferred to Roxas’ political unit to manage sectoral groups such as urban poor and labour groups, etc., and later on undertook political field work.

At the latter part of the campaign, she was given the task of handling the parallel sorties of Korina Sanchez-Roxas.

Entering the field of politics made Rose realize her aptitude for strategy, tactics and relationship management. She would learn about political work and communications – on ground war and air war.

Rose says she learned much from the senator himself. “He is an avid learner, so matututo ka rin dahil sa Socratic Way niya.”

When Sec. Ging rejoined the government under the Aquino administration in July 2010, Rose returned to OPAPP as her chief-of-staff and head of communications.

Communicating peace

Coming back to OPAPP, Rose put into use what she learned in communications from her campaign stint combined with everything else she had learned, and shaped her team to what it is now.

“Sec. Ging said that our work is highly political, so she wants a good comms. So I designed a communications unit similar to what we had in the campaign, and hired new people. Pinakauna si Polly (Cunanan) (I hired Polly Cunanan).” Rose explained that communicating the peace process is challenging because various parties are involved, situations may be complex, and messages must be nuanced according to the audience. “It takes

a lot of brain work. We have to consider strategy, timing, audiences, angle, even political impact. Our set-up allowed us to manage or prevent the crises we faced.”

Evolving

Every day is an exercise of shifting gears for Rose, switching between skill sets to handle matters in the Comm Group and the Office of the Secretary or OSEC that she also supervises. Like with the former, Rose shaped OSEC and installed systems and processes for smooth and almost seamless operations to better serve the PAPP.

Rose admits that managing OSEC is difficult in a different way. This unit has a bigger universe of concerns that are mostly management operations–related. Rose explained that the smallest and simplest mistake can mean a disaster for them if it makes their one and only client dissatisfied. “But we, both of my teams, continue to evolve to better serve through our crafts,” Rose adds, knowing that their own little contributions from the background will make people’s lives better.

After six years in OPAPP, Rose would love to go back to school to learn more and build her academic credentials. “But it depends,” she says. “I hardly planned for any of the past four decades. I see it as God leading me to where I’m supposed to be. We’ll see where He will lead me next.”

For now, she is content with what she does. She draws strength from the love of her family, of sisters, nephews, nieces and her loyal canine companion Mikee; and friends for each day of trying to make things better.


AFTER ALMOST SIX YEARS into the negotiations without moving closer to peace, one of the questions that intrigues us is, “Are we talking to the right party?”

The peace process began with the return of democracy in 1986 when President Corazon Aquino, in a gesture of genuine peace and reconciliation, ordered the release of all political prisoners, including Jose Ma. Sison, the supposed founder and head of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Since then, we have been talking with the National Democratic Front (NDF) for almost three decades without seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

The NDF is a coalition of national democratic forces encompassing the entire gamut of Philippine society,

By ALEXANDER A. PADILLAChair, GPH Negotiating Panel for Peace Negotiations with the CPP/NPA/NDF

REFLECTION

GPH-CPP/NPA/NDF TableAre we talking to the right party?

from the youth/students, religious, teachers, national bourgeoisie, media, peasants, workers, indigenous peoples, artists, and the like. These sectors are grouped under their own respective revolutionary organizations, all of which are underground, and are invariably headed or chaired by Communist Party members. Standing out over and above the rest are the CPP and the NPA.

The CPP is the vanguard of the revolution around which everything revolves. The New People’s Army, as the CPP’s military arm, is tightly controlled by Party cadres and political officers who indoctrinate and enforce strict discipline.

Based on this structure, it is obvious that negotiations with the NDF alone will never suffice.

While it is clearly the role of the NDF to talk peace with government and attempt to get as many concessions (prisoner release, party list participation, etc.) as possible, the CPP is on its own distinct track. From the very beginning, its strategy has always been to use the peace negotiations in order to spread communist propaganda and to hasten the overthrow of government through armed revolution. The official Party newspaper, Ang Bayan has been very consistent in this regard.

As of the moment, it has no intention of abandoning armed struggle as it is resolutely committed to

Chair Alexander A. Padilla


overthrowing the government, regardless of the kind of government in power.

It is not the alleged violations of agreements and other misunderstandings that have led to the frequent breakdown of talks in the past two decades. The simple truth is that the CPP/NPA/NDF is not ready to talk peace. It does not know how. It is only the NDF that espouses the line that it is ready to negotiate a genuine peace. So long as the CPP has not changed its tune, it is hopeless to imagine that the NDF would act independently of its mother organization. Unless this paradigm changes, it will be more of the same in the next administration.

Coming to terms with reality

Both sides, Government and the CPP/NPA/NDF should come to terms with the reality that first, no matter how small an insurgency has become, it will not be defeated or obliterated through the use of a purely military stratagem. Hence, the necessity to talk peace. The CPP/NPA/NDF must also recognize the fact that no matter how many times it says it is on the brink of a strategic stalemate, it can never win a revolution against the duly constituted civilian authority. The sooner it recognizes this to be true, the sooner it will see the necessity of conducting serious negotiations with government to end one of the longest running insurgencies in the world.

The key is to end all forms of violence, whether to suppress dissent or as a means to topple government. From the lessons taught us by many other armed struggles in the world, the cycle of violence has a way of perpetuating itself. It can never end in genuine peace when hate, revenge, getting even, spite and discord are bred and perpetuated.

Should the talks resume under the new administration, what needs to be done?

First, government must set the agenda which must be built on making the life of every Filipino better, more prosperous. The negotiations must be more participative, with stakeholders sitting in as observers and consultants. It is arrogant for the Government and the NDF panels to believe that they alone hold the key to solving the basic and systemic ills of society. Without such inclusion, peace will remain a pipe dream.

A wise person once said that doing the same thing over and over again (regular track, four comprehensive agreements, release of prisoners, safety and immunity guarantees, etc.) with the same result (impasse, procedural agreement signing, breakdowns, etc.), and expecting a different outcome (Final Peace Agreement and with peace, harmony, prosperity and freedom prevailing) is a definition of INSANITY.

Despite the NDF’s insistence on being the only channel for negotiations, it is important to explore other avenues for dialogue, whether multilateral or bilateral, national in scope or limited to particular localities. The approach to the peace negotiation must change diametrically from the intractable framework agreed on in 1972.

An informal moment with NDFP Chief Negotiator Luis Jalandoni and former Royal Norweigan Government (RNG) Facilitator Ture Lundh.

Chair Padilla and former GPH panel member Pablito Sanidad meet with NDFP’s Jalandoni and Fidel Agcaoili.


DESPITE THE EXTRAORDINARY EFFORTS of our teams and all the other tireless peace advocates and congressional allies who travelled with us in this difficult journey of a thousand miles, we saw the session days in Congress wither away, without a Bangsamoro Basic Law in sight.

Still, there is much to be proud of in our hard-fought struggle in the congressional arena. Hindi matatawaran ang pagsisikap na pinamalas ng lahat: the President and his office, civil society organizations in Mindanao and elsewhere, the international community.

As early as July 2014, before the draft law was to be submitted in Congress, the President in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) appealed: “We are currently forging the proposal for the Bangsamoro Basic Law. We ask for the Congress’ understanding regarding this. It is important to scrutinize each provision we lay down. To the best of our ability, we aim to advance a bill that is fair, just, and acceptable to all.”

In his July 2015 SONA, he again appealed: “Now, I wish to talk about legislation, which I hope will be passed during the term of this Congress. The most important of these: the Bangsamoro Basic Law. To those who oppose this measure: I believe that it is incumbent upon you to suggest more meaningful measures. If you do not present an alternative, you are only making sure that progress will never take root in Mindanao. Let me ask you: How many more of our countrymen will have

to perish before everyone realizes that the broken status quo of Muslim Mindanao must change?”

From the start of the negotiations, the GPH Panel engaged our legislators. From the 15th to the 16th Congresses, from then Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile to Senate President Franklin Drilon, we reported to them, and their concerned Committees, and sought their advice. Several legislators, moreover, observed the talks in Kuala Lumpur. A good number also joined exposure trips in Spain and the UK.

With the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), we further saw the honest and faith-full endeavor to meaningfully engage the legislature – not by paid lobby groups, but the people themselves to whom the law mattered, accompanied by their sympathizers.

The legislative will

As the law entered the legislative mill, MILF leaders in the Bangsamoro Transition Committee (BTC) knocked on the doors of senators in their offices to seek understanding. They appeared before congressional hearings, giving a face to the movement that has now effectively entered the terrain of legislative lobby (and even congressional investigations), that is lodged in this other supposedly democratic and representative institution by which the people’s will can see fruition.

By PROF. MIRIAM CORONEL-FERRERChair, GPH Negotiating Panel for Peace Negotiations with the MILF

REFLECTION

GPH-MILF Table‘Patience is bitter,

but its fruit is sweet’

Opening Remarks at the Special Meeting of the GPH and MILF Negotiating Panels, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, February 10, 2016


From the battlefields in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago to the Philippine Congress in Metro Manila – it was a huge leap in mindset and formative socialization of the bearers of Bangsamoro aspirations who trace their descent in the long tradition of armed resistance fought on land and water against the Spanish and American colonial regimes.

The almost daily congressional deliberations also significantly distinguished itself from the process that earlier produced Republic Act 9054. At that time, the legislative process was, unwittingly, abandoned to take its own course. I know this because I followed the crafting of RA 9054 as part of the study we did at the University of the Philippines assessing the implementation of the 1996 GRP-MNLF Final Peace Agreement. In contrast, the legislative process for the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law was “pushed to the max” by the primary advocates themselves.

Of the 40 or so amendments introduced by House Bill 5811, the BTC lobbied for the retention of 28 provisions. These numbers alone show that it is not true that the proponents would not allow any change in the original draft. Besides, any lawmaker can still introduce amendments during the next round of legislative wrestling. But commentators resented this attempt to reinstate some important provisions. Shouldn’t a revolutionary movement acting as a congressional lobby group in fact be welcomed? The passage of other controversial laws like the Reproductive Health Law and the Sin Tax Law were accompanied by the same pushing and steadfastness by lobbyists to preserve important provisions but their proponents were treated with much less antipathy than the BBL advocates.

Many reasons and theories have been given as to why the legislative calendar ended without the desired outcome. Luwaran’s editorial cited four reasons. Editorial cartoons tried to capture our thousand sighs in one freeze frame. I will no longer delve much into this, as the interplay of actors and action-reaction has been complex, and would require some distance to fully comprehend.

And so it happened that while the MILF endeavored to exhaust the legislative process, the 16th Congress simply defaulted.

I remember how Mr. Iqbal once described their situation. “We have one foot inside the door, one foot outside. Help us drag the other foot in,” he said. We are relieved that we still have that one foot inside the door. But what Congress (not all the members, but as a collective entity) did was to shut out the other foot, as if saying: “Diyan muna kayo. Huwag niyo kaming madaliin.” (“Stay there. Don’t rush us.”)

Our legislative bout was a fight well fought. We lost several rounds but each time the peace advocates stood up together to continue the fight. Not for any prize money or fame, but for the just share of the fruits of freedom and democracy for the Bangsamoro.

No perfect agreement

My good counterpart, the wise Mr. Mohager Iqbal, also said once: “There is no perfect agreement.” I hasten to add, “There are no perfect parties to an agreement, and no perfect bills or laws either.”

With humility, we accept the weaknesses and imperfections of our efforts.

We held hundreds of consultations, but apparently we need to do thousands more. We strained to straighten out the misinformation again and again. We still need to do even more.

We nurtured our ceasefire and were confident in the utility of our protocols. But we saw how a major lapse in protocol had unleashed deadly, almost knee-jerk instincts. Therefore, we must continue to tame our old ways and change the mindset of the weapon bearers on both sides of the fence.

From an angry, tight-knit organization, the MILF has increasingly opened up to the other segments of society

GPH Chair Ferrer and MILF Chair Mohagher Iqbal: Defending the BBL


– the other indigenous peoples, the non-Moros, other political forces. The MILF today is a confident MILF, not a besieged closed organization. It is aware of the need for inclusivity. It is a pragmatic organization that carefully balances its idealism with realism. It enjoys the trust and respect of many people in civil society and government who have worked closely with their members. It has chosen peace.

Still, of course, many difficulties remain. Many people do not yet see the difference between one Moro group and another, believing that because they live side by side, they are all alike. Nobody would make that conclusion about Quezon City, where I live, among drug syndicates, carnappers, rapists, corrupt government officials, and petty thieves. Many do not see that the mistake of one need not embody the whole organization, nor the whole tribe, nor the whole religion and its faithful, for that matter.

For all these reasons, much remains to be done to build and nurture public trust through dialogue.

Since all our efforts have not been enough, we should do more. We should listen more, engage more. This cause is ours, and so the main burden

is ours. We shall prevail if we don’t give up now. How many times in the past did events play out to push us almost to the brink of giving up? But precisely because we persevered, we have reached this far in the process.

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet” is a proverb found in many Philippine languages. In Bicolano: An paciencia mapait, alangad an bunga mahamis.

Similarly, the Tagalog say: “Ang sino mang may tiyaga, may palayok na linaga.” (S/he who has patience, gets to enjoy the pot of boiled meat.)

Net positive points

As for the sum total of where we are now, we have definitely gained. We have scored net positive points. We have made life better for the people in the periods of sustained ceasefire, and through the many capacity development programs and socio-economic activities that have flourished.

Our efforts have inspired similarly troubled countries. Our peace infrastructure is serving as a model. Our peace process has the respect and support of the international community, and the envy of those struggling for and seeking their own peace accords.

Historic signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro in Malacañang, March 27, 2014.


change? What to expect? Who would be the champions for peace and the Bangsamoro?

We will have a better reading of the prospects and the best tack after the election and the incoming legislators have been determined. In the Senate, we generally foresee a majority who will be supportive of a good BBL being obtained. This estimate is based on those who would stay, those who are rating well in surveys and, moreover, the fact that several of the contrary ones would no longer be around.

The House probably remains the bigger challenge given these figures: almost half are re-electionists with a good number running unopposed, others are relatives of incumbents, and the rest new entrants or comebacks. While the next President may have less of the leverages traditionally wielded by the chief executive, precisely because of the reforms that have been instituted in the budget system and the illegalization of the PDAF, s/he will enjoy a honeymoon period and will harvest many of the turncoats and can therefore heavily influence the movements in the House. In due time, decisions would have to be made, risks taken. But we have shown that we are not averse to risks. How else did we get this far? “The only genuine kind of dignity is one that is not diminished by the indifference of others,” said Dag Hammarskjöld, the second secretary general of the United Nations.

We have met with adversity. We have cried out against the indifference. But the integrity of the CAB remains, and the dignity of those who have persevered is not diminished.

Padayon!

Many of those who were 10 to 14 years old when we started out in 2010 are now about to enter the cusp of adulthood with a stronger sense of the value of life and human dignity. Instead of learning the ropes of warfare, they experienced relative peace. Like most children used to a hard life, they have solid dreams for a better future for their families.

We wish these children to continue to acquire the needed skills to wage peace through the rough-and-tumble of open and democratic politics. In promoting these non-violent and democratic values to the next generation, we have already won the peace. These children of today would be more adept and more upright to the ways of non-violence to attain justice and democracy when their time to lead comes. Ultimately, our efforts would bring about the needed social and political change, and heal the gaping wound of disunity and misunderstanding among Filipinos.

It is incumbent upon us who have chosen to reject war as the means to do politics, and who commit to the path of peace and democracy, to rally together to make Philippine democracy work for those who have been at the periphery of the nation’s politics. Our armor: a good deal of patience and the perseverance that gives us the moral courage to stay the course.

The Tausugs say: “Isiyu in matugul siya in makagulgul.” (S/he who has the patience and perseveres will achieve the things s/he desires.)

The Warays say: “An gahom kanan nagitkos.” (Power is for him or her who perseveres,.)

The most viable roadmap

The CAB remains our most viable road map, the source of the substance of the policies and legislation that we will continue to pursue under the next administration and the 17th Congress.

The next administration would be foolhardy to wage war, and have everything to gain by upholding this pathway. It will have enough time to see both the CAB and a CAB-compliant law realized.

As for the best legislative tack in the next Congress, several questions are relevant: Would it simply entail a refiling of a BBB (Bangsamoro Basic Bill)? Which version? Are the prospects ripe for constitutional

Signing of the annexes to the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro, Kuala Lumpur, January 25, 2014.

50 51KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAANMarch 2016 March 2016

OPAPP UNITS

Office of the Secretary

TO BE IN THE OFFICE OF THE Secretary is to live and breathe Ging Deles. From the mundane to the top secret, we accompany the Secretary and try to stay steps ahead to address her daily administrative, technical and operational needs. Our role is to make the Secretary’s work easier by providing an organized support system so she can fulfill her daily tasks as the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP). And we simply cannot succeed in this line of work if we do not fully know the person we work for and the things she works for.

As we always say, we are PAPP-centric.

For the most part, we work behind the scenes. We are her events organizers, caterers, paper-pushers, writers, runners, drivers, accountants and record keepers. We do the little things that make bigger, greater ones possible. Hav and Aubrey set up her meetings, social activities, and process her invitations. Kai and Vanna review her documents and draft her letters, while Renz keeps track of her documents and Joshua drafts her messages and some speeches. Raffy, Chris, Boy, Tony, Richard and Leonie with her security detail — the two Sols, Aba, and Ato — make sure that she arrives at her destinations safe and sound. Clai and Ai ensure that

there are funds for the activities we need to do. Of course, Manang Beth and Marissa, with the help of Jonathan and Jerry, ensure that she has a clean and fresh working environment, and that she eats well. And the executive assistants, Susan and Nikki, accompany her wherever she goes. We do all these and more!

We are the hub that connects the PAPP to all units of the agency and other agencies, organizations, and personalities. For this, we are her sponge, loudspeakers and dragon harassers. We coordinate with the units and executives to relay instructions, agreements and missives; and we work with them

1st row: Susan Mogao, Vanessa Maynard, Sec. Teresita Quintos Deles, Janine Nicole Liao, Karen Domingo. 2nd row: Jerry Bareng, Soledad Baccay, Marissa Salazar, Marife Abarientos, Elizabeth Buctot, Dir. Aubrey Gail Mallari, Clarissa Batac, Irma Fugaban, Afril Apolinar, Hauvre Somova, Rowena Ignacio. 3rd row: Rafaelito de Guzman, Antonio Alaurin, Rodolfo Dizon, Marcial Balde, Leonides Dizon, Jonathan Concepcion.


accomplishments, and we give her comfort food when things don’t go the way she knows they should. We are at our happiest when she is happy.

We have learned from the Secretary that the peace process is not the surest thing. Much remains uncertain in the coming months, but what we are sure of is this: we at OSEC will always be behind our beloved Sec. Ging, supporting and defending her, making her work of peace a little easier, a little smoother, one day at a time, one task at a time. - Rosalie Romero

to ensure that these are carried out to the Secretary’s satisfaction. And when there are failures to meet deadlines or expectations, we absorb the heat first, and blow out steam after. But to get things done, we turn up the heat on others and often sic Kai or Susan on them. We send the velvet gloves of Vanna, Aubrey, Nikki, Weng and Marissa when necessary. But when all else fails, we call in Asec. Rose, the Mother Dragon.

The work of OSEC is, more often than not, difficult and challenging, but always exciting. There are quiet moments, but it is never dull. It mirrors the pace and intensity of the work of the PAPP in overseeing the country’s comprehensive peace process towards the goal of achieving a just and lasting peace. Through the highs and lows of the processes she holds, we are constantly inspired by her passion and commitment, and strive to go beyond ourselves in keeping the faith, as she does.

As majority women ourselves in the unit, we are proud of what our boss has accomplished to ensure that women are given a greater role in preventing or resolving armed conflict. She has opened the doors

wider so that at some time in the future, maybe the young women in the unit will themselves take on these greater roles. This is not far-fetched since OSEC has become a training ground for learning not just about peace and the peace process, but equally important, the skills, style, creativity, professionalism and ethics that we learn from the boss herself.

Yes, we are PAPP-centric.

Her joys are our joys, her sorrows our sorrows. Her triumphs are our triumphs. We take pride in her

Sec. Teresita Quintos Deles

Party time. Asec. Rose Romero, Vanessa Maynard, Dir. Aubrey Mallari, Karen Domingo, Janine Nicole Liao and Marc Siapno celebrate with Sec. Ging on her birthday.

Asec. Rose Romero


Panel Secretariat for GPNP-MILF Talks

AS THE GOVERNMENT PEACE Negotiating Panel for Talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (GPNP-MILF), we conduct negotiations with the MILF and undertake inclusive consultations with stakeholders.

Since 2010, we have held over 800 consultations around the country and 24 rounds of exploratory talks in Kuala Lumpur. These resulted

in the crafting of the historic Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), signed by the Parties on March 27, 2014. A product of 17 years of negotiations, the CAB embodies a comprehensive political solution to address the decades-old armed conflict with the MILF.

The CAB is our proudest achievement, but it is only half of the work that needs to be done.

Crucial to the CAB is the enactment of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which is designed to create the Bangsamoro political entity in Mindanao. With the BBL stalled in Congress after the Mamasapano incident, the resolve of the Panel and the staff to pursue peace has grown stronger.

The ceasefire and the normalization process have allowed conflict-

OPAPP UNITS

1st row: Farrah Grace Naparan, Dir. Wendell Orbeso, Prof. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, Juliet Parungao, Dir. Iona Gracia Jalijali, Lorraine Cortez, Olivia Ramos, Liza Mae Batuyong, Airiz Jessia Mia Parrilla. 2nd row: Mark Sherwin Bayanito, Al-Bari Macalawan, Jennifer Marie Tiu, Girlie Mariño, Hassan Aburajak, Joanna Paula Lorico, Rodalyn dela Cruz, Rosaida Javier, Rolando Abillada, Leonardo Olazo, Atty. Anna Tarhata Basman. Not in photo: Atty. Sittie Amirah Pendatun, Atty. Mohammad Al-Amin Julkipli, Atty. Armi Beatriz Bayot, Dir. Susan Guadalupe Marcaida, Leila Halud, Ma. Leonor Sevilla, Ailene Dizon, Ana Liza Caguimbal, May Ruzol, Marife Infante, Jorito Ancheta, Noel Sexon, and Noel Sta. Clara and Dir. Carlos Sol Jr., Secretariat for the GPH-Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (GPH-CCCH) and GPH-Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (GPH-AHJAG).


affected communities to return to conditions where they can pursue livelihoods and participate in political processes. They are essential to the full implementation the CAB. For this, the office has grown to include the GPH Secretariat of the Joint Normalization Committee (JNC), the Socio-Economic Unit, the Combined Secretariat for the GPH Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH) and the GPH Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG), and the Cotabato Office.

The work of the JNC and other bodies such as the Independent Decommissioning Body (IDB) and the Task Force for Decommissioned Combatants and their Communities (TFDCC) and the Joint Task Forces for Camps Transformation (JTFCT), with the support of the Cotabato Office and the Socio-Economic Unit, aims to facilitate peaceful and productive life.

The CCCH, AHJAG, and the International Monitoring Team (IMT) are mechanisms mandated to ensure that the GPH-MILF ceasefire is upheld. Since 2010, the number

of skirmishes between the GPH and the MILF significantly decreased, from 218 in 2008, down to zero from 2012 to 2014. When the ceasefire was broken in Mamasapano in 2015, the importance of coordination between government forces and the MILF in the conduct of law enforcement operations was highlighted.

In June 2015, the ceremonial turnover of MILF weapons and decommissioning of 145

MILF combatants were held in Maguindanao. Socio-economic programs were launched to help combatants become productive members of society. In December 2015, the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) submitted its final report to the Panels, and there is ongoing work towards the operationalization of its recommendations. We continue to respond to the call of the Constitution for meaningful autonomy in the region. The CAB admonishes the GPH and the MILF to adhere to their commitment towards peace through democratic processes and reforms. The CAB includes transitional justice and reconciliation measures to address historical injustices and bring about national unity and harmony.

We need to ensure that the infrastructure for implementing the CAB is functional so that the next administration will be in a good position to push forward the full implementation of the agreement. - Mark Sherwin Bayanito

Dir. Susana Guadalupe Marcaida, Joint Normalization Committee Secretariat

Dir. Wendell Orbeso, OPAPP Cotabato Office

Dir. Hadzer Birowa, Sajahatra/Socio-Economic Unit

Dir. Iona Gracia Jalijali, GPNP-MILF Secretariat


Panel Secretariat forGPH-CPP/NPA/NDF Talks

THE PANEL SECRETARIAT draws its mandate from Executive Order No. 3 (series of 2001) which is to provide technical and administrative support to the GPH Panel for talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF. It sounds simple, but it is really daunting work.

The work of the Panel Secretariat covers the entire gamut of tasks involving CSW (completed staff work) needed to literally “dress up” the GPH Panel for its challenging task as peace negotiators and peace advocates.

We draft confidential technical reports such as negotiating agreements, frameworks, strategy papers, road maps, issue papers, memoranda for the President and others, and provide day-to-day administrative support such as arranging meetings/activities, reproducing/collating documents, packaging agenda kits, making airline and hotel reservations, ordering hot meals, and other mundane but necessary chores.

In doing these tasks, we coordinate closely with concerned units of

OPAPP UNITS

OPAPP and the GPH Monitoring Committee (GPH MC) Secretariat (created under Executive Order 404, series of 2004) for technical support on matters pertaining to human rights and International Humanitarian Law.

There is no task too big or too small for the secretariat, as each is essential to support the panel’s work. We are proud to say that we perform each task wholeheartedly and efficiently in the spirit of love, peace, unity, teamwork and shared responsibility.

GPH-C/N/N and GPH-MC Secretariats: 1st Row: Elmor D. Dulay, Celso J. Roque, Rosalyn B. Lachica, Fe Oaing-Doromal, Dir. Maria Carla Munsayac-Villarta, , Lisa C. Bernales, Xyl D. Aguilar, Editha T. Wayas. 2nd Row: Linda N. Cañete, Johanna Kiamzon-Naga, Jenivive N. Cruz, Oscar B. Bathan, Cesar M. Mamangconi and Jose D. Andres. Not in photo: Celine Mendoza.


In the last 30 years, the Panel Secretariat has served five panels across five presidencies. Each panel is unique, characterized by the competence of each member and the dynamism of the group. Each panel has operated in a different policy environment under different administrations. Each panel has experienced difficulties and faced challenges in the talks that have been marred by over 15 disruptions due to contentious issues that have recurred through the years. We in the secretariat have been quick to adjust

to every situation, and roll with the punches, so to speak.

Despite the ups and downs in the peace talks, what is important is that the Panel Secretariat is always on its toes, energized and focused on carrying out our defined work in the service of the Panel, from where we draw inspiration and our reason for being.

We in the Panel Secretariat see ourselves as the backbone of the GPH Panel. As the “elves” behind the main players, we help the Panel do its job with as much ease and efficiency as possible. Often, we go beyond meeting the Panel’s requirements, by anticipating its needs and doing our work proactively, without having to be told.

With the wealth of knowledge and experience it has accumulated through the years, the Panel Secretariat is preparing to share the narrative of the peace process with the next panel in the incoming administration. There are lessons from the three decades of talks that must be transmitted to the new panel, and based on these, some insights on moving the talks forward towards a genuine political settlement of the armed conflict.

Panel Technical Committee

The Panel Secretariat houses the Panel Technical Committee (Tech Com) which provides support to the Panel and the PAPP with studies, opinions, position papers, and recommendations on issues arising from the peace process.

The Tech Com is the repository of a vast collective institutional memory of the history of the peace negotiations, since its inception in 1986. Headed by Assistant Secretary Dan Encinas as Chair, the Tech Com is made up mostly of veterans who have served the government peace process since 1972. Their collective knowledge and experience in the peace talks through the decades has been invaluable to the GPH in reading the mind of the NDF panel.

The Tech Com meets often to assess the status of the peace talks and discuss ways to move the talks forward. It is currently preparing the Panel’s transition report on the peace negotiations (1986 to 2016), including possible courses of action for consideration by the next administration. - Maria Carla Munsayac-Villarta

GPH-CNN Panel Technical Committee: Ma. Lorenza Palm-Dalupan, Paulynn Sicam, Dir. Maria Carla Munsayac-Villarta, Asec. Danilo L. Encinas and BGen. Teodoro Cirilo T Torralba III (Ret).

Dir. Maria Carla Munsayac-Villarta


THE OFFICE OF THE Executive Director (OED), headed by Undersecretary Luisito Montalbo, is responsible for managing and overseeing the organization’s operations. As ED, Usec. Montalbo reports directly to the PAPP, cascades her directives and instructions to all OPAPP units, and ensures compliance.

The ED convenes the OPAPP management committee composed of all unit heads to discuss the progress of the programs and projects led by the agency, and reports to the Executive Committee

Office of theExecutive Director

for information and/or appropriate action. He also represents the PAPP in some functions and acts as the officer-in-charge in her absence.

The units under the direct supervision of the OED are Legal and Security, Data Management, Finance and Administrative Services, Planning and Compliance, and Monitoring and Evaluation.

Legal and Security Unit (LSU)

The Legal and Security Unit is in charge of reviewing memoranda

of agreement, contracts and all legal documents of the agency, and coordinates with the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines on security matters in the implementation of OPAPP programs and projects.

Data Management Unit (DMU)

When people hear about the Data Management Unit, they probably think of a repository for all OPAPP-related data. While that is partly true because, in a sense we operate like a vault, that is not all we are.

OPAPP UNITS

Usec. Louie Montalbo

OED: 1st row: Almie Kris Ocampo, Usec. Luisito Montalbo, Vanessa Estraño, Joanna Marie Cabusao. 2nd row: Christian Medina, Prisci Val Bulanhagui, Remi de Leon, John Estrellado.


The Data Management Unit manages and processes conflict-related data alongside a number of development indicators and variables that may contribute to the existence of conflict in the country. In short, we handle data for and about the different peace tables. We extract (gathering, review), transform (consolidation, tabulation, normalization), and load (linking, summary generation, mapping) data.

Maps? Yes, we do maps. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we are able to generate substantive maps using the data that we gather, as long as we clean the data first. Cleaning actually takes a bigger portion of our time.

Working closely with the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, our System Development Team has created information system applications to support the peace

tables, such as the PAMANA Information System (PIS) and the Former Rebel Information System (FRIS), among others. These systems present the consolidated data to potential end-users in a friendlier and more convenient format, like the ones you see on your smartphones. The fancy buttons are part of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) we developed. Without them, we’d be dealing with a very complicated mishmash of wires instead of merely tapping on and sliding a screen. We also craft user manuals for our systems to help our clients maneuver through the GUI. - Lennard Duane Fernando

Finance and Administrative Services (FAS)

As the strategic partner of OPAPP Management towards operational excellence, the Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) Unit provides general administrative support to all units. As such, it facilitates the finance, administrative and human resources requirements of the office.

DMU: Mark Anthony Pallar, John Ray Domingo, Michael Macadangdang, Lennard Duane Fernando, Francis Demata, Charmaine Medina, Aisa Faith Perez.

Dir. Antonio Florida

Finance: 1st row: Eloisa Abasta, Grace Buena, Alicia Lazo, Cynthia Gabito. 2nd row: Florence Umoso, Diana Bachine, Corazon Almario, Teodora Magayanes, Ligaya Mora, Sheryl Burawes, Melanie Manaloto, Maria Josella Clemente, Josie Ann Manantan, Irish Tinampay. 3rd row: Ronald Ignacio, Philip Paclean, Cesar Clement Dalisay, Alex Orendain.


FAS is composed of two offices: Finance and Administrative Units. Finance is composed of five sections, namely, pre-audit, budget, disbursement and liquidation, cashier, and accounting. It is responsible for ensuring OPAPP’s compliance with financial guidelines set by government rules and regulations.

The Administrative Unit is mandated to promote the culture

of performance, accountability, individual and organizational learning, and development. Under this office are the human resource management office, and the property and supply, billing and ticketing, information and communications technology, records, building management, and motor pool sections.

Since the unit has to respond to “rush” requests, the people of FAS have to be fast. - Karisse Macalanda

Planning and Compliance Unit (PCU) The Planning and Compliance Unit (PCU), under the direct control and supervision of the Office of the Executive Director (OED), is tasked with planning and assessment, compliance and budgeting.

We are known in OPAPP as the “makukulit” team. We provide technical and administrative support in the crafting and alignment of the Work and Financial Plans (WFPs) of all

OPAPP units with the set targets, and monitoring compliance by the units to their WFPs. We work closely with the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit (MEU) for an integrated planning, monitoring and evaluation process that ensures plans are anchored on well-crafted results frameworks. We serve as the Performance Management Team (PMT) Secretariat for the grant of the Performance-Based Bonus, for which we review and validate unit Office Performance Commitment and Review (OPCR) ratings based on their accomplishment reports and satisfaction survey results for support units and come up with an assessment for final deliberation of the PMT. As the term of the Aquino administration draws to a close, there is a need to ensure that its gains in the peace process are sustained by documenting proven and disproven processes, methods and approaches to be transmitted to the next administration PCU is providing technical and

Administrative Unit: 1st row: Rodelio Samson, Dir. Adonis Zeta, Imelda Driza, Zayda Guanio, Gilly Guerrero, Milet Limbo, Karisse Macalanda, Sarah Jane Trajano, Mary Grace Mendoza, Katrina Stangl. 2nd row: Danilo Alfonso, Edward Anthony Esporas, Fatima del Valle, Liana Joyce Parungao, Ryan Pelicano, Girly Cortez, Dir. Antonio Florida. 3rd row: Cedd Abilard Cepres, Noel Esternon, Elpidio dela Cruz, Bernard Malantic, Caezar Wenceslao, Ernesto Jusaner Mancita, Michael Ucab, Jeremiah David Ballesteros, Emerson Urbano, Romeo Mariales.

Dir. Adonis Zeta


administrative support for the preparation of the Terminal Report which shall review, document and analyze OPAPP’s accomplishments (2010-2015) vis-à-vis its mission and directions and craft recommendations for the next administration. Our unit ensures the timely submission of OPAPP reportorial requirements and commitments by coordinating with concerned units, consolidating and checking their inputs, and packaging and transmittal of submissions of briefers, documents, and reports required by different government agencies and offices. PCU also serves as the Secretariat of the Management and Executive Committees, providing technical and/or administrative support during meetings, preparing the agenda and required documents and following through on the decisions and action points agreed upon by the ManCom and ExeCom. We provide technical and administrative support for the

budgeting process for the passage of the OPAPP, Socio-Economic Component of Normalization, and PAMANA Budgets. This entails working closely with the ManCom on the succeeding year’s targets and budgetary requirements and the Finance Administrative Services (FAS) for the completion and submission of OPAPP’s budgetary requirements, coordinating with the staff of the House of Representatives and Senate, ensuring the attendance of key OPAPP officials and staff during presentations and hearings, and other staff support.

We have established and implemented an integrated planning and monitoring and evaluation process and PCME focal person system; established and maintained a good working relationship with liaison officers of the Senate Committee on Finance, the House Committee on Appropriations and the DBM, and implemented a “focal person system” for attendance in congressional technical budget hearings.

Despite being understaffed and tagged as makulit (demanding), the PCU continues to deliver with due diligence and accomplish what is required through continuous engagement and constant communication with concerned units and requesting agencies. At times, we are even on call 24/7 with the Presidential Management Staff, but at PCU, it’s all in a day’s work. - Pamela Ann Padilla-Salvan Monitoring and Evaluation Unit (MEU)

When Secretary Teresita Quintos Deles expressed satisfaction regarding the updates from the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit (MEU) during the general assembly on December 28, 2015, we knew that all the hard work, stress, sleepless nights, and early morning email consultations we experienced had paid off. The PAPP also noted that the work in setting up systems for reflection, accountability, and learning during the current administration has been unprecedented.

PCU: Jay Nuarin, Ann Margaret Reyes, Dir. Pamela Ann Padilla-Salvan, Martin Lean Fernando, Melody Grace Orendain, Julius Oliver Gregorio. Dir. Pamela Ann S. Padilla-Salvan


The PAPP’s recognition of the efforts of MEU in instituting a Conflict-Sensitive and Peace Promoting Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (CSPP MEAL) system was like getting the Christmas bonus we were all waiting for.

MEU began as part of a larger unit called the Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit (PMEU), which supported monitoring and evaluation, planning and compliance, and data management initiatives within the organization. In the latter part of 2014, a decision was made to break down the PMEU into Monitoring and Evaluation, Planning and Compliance, and Data Management. Thus, the birth of MEU.

As a support unit, the MEU provides technical assistance for the establishment of the M&E system of peace tables and programs as well as the enhancement of Transparency and Accountability Mechanisms. It also supports program evaluation and learning, and other initiatives of OPAPP units and its partner agencies relative to the core business processes for monitoring and evaluation.

Under the guidance of Director Boy Randee Cabaces, the unit’s story highlights significant changes in processes and mechanisms that proved meaningful in mainstreaming CSPP M&E practices in support of the overall peace building agenda, such as: (1) the development and mainstreaming of the CSPP MEAL system among OPAPP units, partner National Government Agencies (NGAs), Local Government Units and other peace partners; (2) laying the groundwork for systematic evaluation work as part of the discourse on accountability and learning for government programs; and (3) surfacing the CSPP MEAL agenda in policy initiatives such as in the Sustainable Development Goals, Local Development Planning, and support interventions for Most Vulnerable Groups through its technical assistance to the National Action Plan for Women, Peace and Security and Children in Armed Conflict.

Part of the unit’s narrative points toward how other OPAPP units recognized the MEU as a trusted service unit, as reflected in MEU’s user satisfaction survey results

that cited the unit’s initiative and continuous work in collaboration and constant coordination with OPAPP units and partner agencies, generating new ideas from ground partners that support ownership of processes, and capacitating of and support for the M&E initiatives of OPAPP units. The MEU also acknowledges existing areas for improvement as spaces for continued dialogue and engagement with peace partners on how to further enhance the service that it provides to these partners.

The ability to laugh, even at ourselves, enables the team to be flexible and navigate the stresses of our daily work, to continue weaving stories of meaningful engagement in humble service of the overall peace building agenda. The team also takes camaraderie and teamwork seriously as evident in the members’ support for each other not only in work-related tasks but also in pursuing one another’s personal goals.

Stories, questions, laughter, dreams, friendship, practice, learning, striving, and heart — these are some words that mirror the MEU. - Jennifer Santos

Dir. Boy Randee Cabaces

MEU: Jennifer Santos, Rene Maygay, Celia Loyola, Eugenio Sirot, Joffrey Maranion, Dir. Boy Randee Cabaces, Timothy Salomon, Judith de Guzman, Marie Bembie Girado. Not in photo: Emmanuel Santos.


Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy

THE OFFICE OF THE Assistant Secretary for Policy reviews policy documents from other government agencies to ensure their consistency with the national government’s peace process agenda. The office develops strategy papers, policies, and modules relevant to peace processes with different groups.

Today, the Executive Office for Policy, known within OPAPP simply as the Policy Unit, develops policies and modules to help partner agencies incorporate OPAPP’s

Conflict Sensitive and Peace Promotion framework in their regular operations.

The Policy Unit assists the Whole-of-Nation Initiative (WNI) Task Force by developing strategies and papers and providing support for programs.

“When Assistant Secretary Jennifer Oreta (aka Asec. Apple) took over this office in November 2012, she had only one co-worker, me, in a tiny space,” relates Carla Ravanes.

OPAPP UNITS

1st row: Joan Hope Tolibas, Asec. Jennifer Santiago Oreta, Miracle Jacklyn Espinas, Lolito Nakila. 2nd row: Divina Gracia Conmigo, Carla Isabel Ravanes, Rachel Mariano, Leilani Lino, Edwin Jose, George Maggay.

Asec. Jennifer Santiago Oreta


KMRC: 1st row: Maria Rajini Cuevas-Demabasa, Fatima Arceo, Michelle Ann Ramirez, Melisa Gail Yubokmee. 2nd row: Dir. John Bradley Fenomeno, Lolito Nakila, Cherry Casilao, Ernesto Rehuel Estonilo, Allan Macalanda.

“Adding one employee two months later meant we could get more work done. But it also made our already limited workspace more cramped.”

The Policy Unit supervises the Project Management Office of the Mainstreaming Peace and Development in Local Governance Program (MPDLGP) and the Knowledge Management and Resource Center (KMRC), making sure their work is aligned with the work of OPAPP in conflict-affected areas.

The KMRC was established in 2013 initially as a hub for theory building and research under the Policy Unit. At the start, KMRC encountered challenges in delineating its functions within the organization. The staff sought out experts who could train them in knowledge management. Eventually, KMRC crafted a work plan and found its niche in OPAPP.

KMRC veered towards capacity building, crafting modules and interactive audio-visual presentations for the training of former rebels as forest guards.

These formed part of “Peace 101”, a collection of primer-videos on Democracy, Citizenship, Human Rights, Human Security and Peace, and Values Clarification for former rebels.

From its humble beginnings, KMRC now maintains an effective knowledge management system that transforms knowledge resources into knowledge products.

The unit manages the OPAPP library, aka Ambassador Manuel T. Yan Peace Resource Center (Archiving); facilitates workshops for OPAPP employees to broaden their appreciation of the peace process (Instruction); documents lessons learned, best practices, and gaps in implementation as inputs in decision-making, policy-making; and institutionalizes the culture of knowledge-sharing (Research).

Integral to KMRC’s operation is the management of the OPAPP library (AMTYPRC), which is home to historical documents and artifacts on the peace process since 1987 when the process was under the Office of the Peace Commissioner. It

has a collection of more than 3,000 books, journals, and audio-visual materials on the Philippine peace process, acquired from various local and international sources.

KMRC also assists other OPAPP units, peace tables, and project management offices. Working closely with the OPAPP communications unit, it supervises the production of the OPAPP publication, Kababaihan at Kapayapaan. - Ernesto Rehuel Estonilo

Dir. John Bradley Fenomeno


Office of theUndersecretary for Programs

builds the constituency of NAP WPS by strengthening linkages between civil society and other stakeholders to support its implementation.

Closure agreements

It handles the implementation of government’s peace agreements with the Cordillera Bodong Administration-Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CBA-CPLA) and the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Pilipinas/Revolutionary Proletarian Army/Alex Boncayao Brigade-Tabara Paduano Group (RPMP/RPA/ABB-TPG).

A Closure Agreement Secretariat attends to the requirements of

putting closure on those peace accords. Asec. Danilo Encinas directly oversees the closure programs with Dir. Marilou Ibañez attending to the Project Management Offices set up for the CPLA and RPMP/RPA/ABB.

The CPLA and the RPMP/RPA/ABB accords are a follow-through of earlier general ceasefire agreements they signed with past administrations in 1986 and 2000, respectively. These agreements have held over the years but the CBA-CPLA and the RPMP/RPA/ABB have continued to exist as armed units due to the lack of proper closure.

THE OFFICE OF THE Undersecretary for Programs (OUP) headed by Usec. Gettie Sandoval handles a gamut of OPAPP concerns, from the NAP to the CBA-CPLA and RPMP/RPA/ABB, to the PAMANA and CLIP Coordinating Unit.

NAP WPS

It serves as the Secretariat for the implementation of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (NAP WPS). As such it provides technical support to government agencies and local government units for the integration of NAP WPS in both policy and program levels. The Secretariat also

OPAPP UNITS

OUP: Muriel Magadia, Lanie Disomangcop, Diana Kathrina Leomo, Jeanette Bellen, Usec. Maria Cleofe Gettie C. Sandoval, Evelyn Cortez, Nena Maturan, Helen Rojas Balawag, Maridel Alberto.Usec. Gettie Sandoval


The groups agreed to pursue the full disposition of arms and forces in line with their rejection of the armed struggle as a means of pursuing the people’s interests.

Says Dir. Ibañez, “We have encountered serious challenges in the past four years; the implementation processes and relationships are far from perfect, but no one from both groups has threatened to go back to taking up arms.

“We have learned a number of lessons that we would like to share as ways of moving forward within

the time left under the Aquino administration.

“First, we learned that the commitment of our leadership is very important. President Aquino and Secretary Deles have never wavered in their pursuit of peace, governance reforms and protection of democratic rights, especially human and civil and political rights. Our partners at the closure tables continue to affirm their trust in this leadership. It will be crucial for the next set of leaders to demonstrate the same commitment.

“Second, we have learned the importance of always going back

without which the turning in of firearms can become just a one-off showcase event that could be countered by the acquisition of new weapons, especially in places where the ownership of firearms is part of the local culture. The challenge is how to build on peace building mechanisms on the ground after the disposition of arms and forces. Particularly for CBA-CPLA, which is the only table to have closed, it is necessary to rely on the communities, and on what has worked for them in building peace among themselves through the years.”

Asec. Dan Encinas

Dir. Marilou Ibañez

OAP Closure: Jessie L. Figueras, Atty. Virgilio A. Tiongson Jr., Joevic T. Bendanillo, BGen. Teodoro Cirilo Torralba III (Ret), Asec. Danilo L. Encinas, Ferdy S. Naguit, Christopher M. Muncal, Eric Anthony A. Esporas, Paolo I. Magtarayo.

CAS: Janeth Reyes, Ira Sol, Sheryl Datinguinoo, Christina Loren Umali, Dir. Marilou Ibañez, Den Mark Hernandez, Sandra Garcia, Maria Magdalena Barrios.


in the lives of the communities due to the convergence of efforts generated by the program.

This is done at the inter-agency level, which has further strengthened OPAPP’s partnership with RLAs/LGAs and the concerned LGUs. With the relationships established by the inter-agency group with the communities on the ground, it is now the local stakeholders who are starting to initiate and replicate peace building activities. - Juniel Guath

PAMANA and CLIP Coordinating Unit

The OUP also oversees the implementation of PAMANA, focusing on CPP/NPA/NDF affected areas, in coordination with the National PAMANA Management Office (NPMO) and the PAMANA and CLIP Coordinating Unit (PCCU).

The PCCU was formed with the merger of two OPAPP operations units—PAMANA Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and the Comprehensive Local Integration Program Unit (CLIP). Its main role is to coordinate the implementation of the PAMANA program in identified areas affected by the Communist insurgency.

Local offices were established in different conflict zones: Bicol-Quezon-Mindoro, Samar Island, and the CARAGA-Davao Corridor. These zones are managed by area managers supported by area coordinators.

One of its more successful initiatives is the Serbisyo Peace Caravan that PCCU championed, over 70 of which

have been held in the past three years benefitting residents from around 470 barangays across the three zones. The caravans, implemented alongside PAMANA-funded projects, reinforce the convergence of the different regional line agencies (RLAs), local government agencies/units (LGA/LGU) and partner organizations in the delivery of basic services in conflict-affected areas and bring the government closer to the people.

A major factor that has contributed to the success in the implementation of PAMANA projects is the fact that the area managers and coordinators are themselves stakeholders in their respective areas. Thus, there is strong local ownership of the program.

OPAPP has oversight function over PAMANA, which is implemented on the ground by the regional line agencies and LGUs. Mostly, the PCCU concentrates on ensuring that the conflict-sensitive and peace promoting processes of PAMANA are adopted by PAMANA partners from planning to project implementation, monitoring the status of projects, and documenting the significant changes

Dir. Ma. Eileen Jose-Salvador

PCCU: 1st row: Paul Escober, Christopher Azucena, Dir. Ma. Eileen Jose-Salvador, Imelda Bonifacio, Anna Marie Uytico. 2nd row: Juniel Guath, Jasmine Chua, Maricel Ballasola-Bantilo, Patricia Mae Alino, Luz Anggot, Ophelia Delute, Tristan Jeremias Bello, Jesylita Encabo, Ken Feliciano. 3rd row: Bryan Azura, Francis Reboroso, Ramon Acal, Flor Agner, Michael Patrick Sibbaluca.


PAMANA National ProgramManagement Office

development that caters to the needs of conflict-affected and vulnerable communities. PAMANA was conceived as a complementary track to the peace negotiations in line with the Aquino administration’s strategy to attain just and lasting peace. This is done by extending development interventions to isolated, hard-to-reach, and conflict-affected and conflict-vulnerable areas (CAAs/CVAs), ensuring that they are not left behind. As of 2016, PAMANA has served communities in 15 regions, totalling 48 provinces and six HUCs,

488 municipalities, and over 5,000 barangays.

Through PAMANA, the administration has invested PhP36.74B from 2011 to 2016 via national agencies in promoting the convergent delivery of goods and services, and addressing regional or sub-regional development challenges in areas affected by and vulnerable to internal armed conflict. PAMANA also highlights the good governance agenda of the Aquino administration (or Daang Matuwid) through the adoption of transparency

THE PAMANA National Program Management Office (NPMO) was established to enable OPAPP to perform its oversight function in the implementation of the PAMANA Program. It provides coordination support to the policy guidance and directions in the implementation of the Program as well as the necessary technical assistance in support of PAMANA operations.

PAMANA is the national government’s program and framework for peace and

OPAPP UNITS

1st row: Menchie Celestial, Asec. Howard Cafugauan, Lakambini Magdamo. 2nd row: Roy Stephen Canivel, Rea Etang, Lady Jean Kabagani, Joesilyn Largo, Nadia Lorena, Jennifer Ann Ambanta. 3rd row: Michael Ojano, Reginald Baticulon, Dean Isip, Michael Angelo Filio, Pedro Sibayan.


and accountability measures in PAMANA implementation.

PAMANA aims to to improve socio-economic conditions in CAAs and CVAs and in areas covered by peace agreements by developing infrastructure and focusing on the delivery of social services; improving governance by building institutional capacities of national government agencies and local governments for a conflict-sensitive, peace-promoting and gender-sensitive approach to development; and empowering communities by strengthening their capacities to address issues of conflict and peace through activities that improve social cohesion.

The NPMO gives technical assistance to the development programs laid down by the negotiating tables. It provides concept notes on the proposed area-based development approach; formulates proposals supporting the Bangsamoro Convergence Forum; and implements the community-based demobilization-community security management in Moro National Liberation Front areas.

The NPMO also helps mainstream the Conflict Sensitivity and Peace

Promotion (CSPP) framework. CSPP is the legacy of PAMANA, which is seen to influence the planning of agencies to support project interventions for CAAs/CVAs. The NPMO has provided technical and coordination assistance to the mainstreaming effort in cooperation with the OPAPP Policy Unit and Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG). Through these joint efforts, the government has used CSPP indicators in formulating the Medium-Term Plan for 2016-2022 (to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) and in preparation for the Philippine Development Plan.

The NPMO, in coordination with OPAPP support units, also provides capacity building for all partner agencies, national or local, on PAMANA’s information system and conflict-sensitive monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning processes.

The NPMO coordinates with PAMANA implementing agencies at the national level on regular agency monitoring and evaluation activities; compliance with reportorial requirements; and the operationalization of the PAMANA information system and the PAMANA feedback and redress system.

To highlight the peace building gains of PAMANA, NPMO in coordination with the OPAPP Communications Group has developed a strategic communication plan for PAMANA, which includes providing inputs to the PAMANA website.

To support OPAPP responsibilities on PAMANA, the NPMO works closely with implementing agencies at the national and regional levels—the

Department of Social Welfare and Development, DILG, Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Energy, National Irrigation Administration, National Electrification Administration, Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, Commission on Higher Education, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. NPMO supports OPAPP and agency partners during the budget hearing process in Congress.

In support of project implementation, the NPMO coordinates and provides oversight to PAMANA coordinating units for Bangsamoro, CPP/NPA/NDF and Closure and Project Management Offices that work with with field offices of line agencies, local government partners, and beneficiary communities.

PAMANA also coordinates the Localization of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security of PAMANA LGUs in collaboration with the Gender and Development Focal Point System. - NPMO Team

Asec. Howard Cafugauan

Dir. Yusop Paraji


WHEN THE BANGSAMORO OFFICE was established, we dreamed of ONE BANGSAMORO where the MNLF and the MILF would converge in a common framework for peace. Difficulties and obstacles have come our way preventing us from moving towards that dream, but we have never given up and with strong faith, we always believed that we would realize it one day.

For the BMO, achieving ONE BANGSAMORO is more than a task. It is an aspiration of the unit, from its head, Undersecretary Jose I. Lorena to the technical and administrative staff, and it has motivated every member of the staff to perform his and her best.

On January 26, 2016 in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the dream

Office of the Undersecretary for Bangsamoro Programs

of ONE BANGSAMORO finally began to become a reality. The Tripartite Review Process (TRP) on the Implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement was concluded with a singular pronouncement that the Moro fronts (MILF and MNLF) would come together in a common framework to achieve lasting peace and prosperity in Southern Philippines and the country as a whole.

We can now raise our heads high and say that we have done it. There could still be obstacles along the way but we have faith that if you believe in what you are doing, it will be realized in due time.

Our mission could only be accomplished with unity and cooperation in the team. The

Bangsamoro Office works not only as a team, but as a family. We believe that the team that works together and believes in each other will rise above the challenges and go farther.

We continue to work for PEACE, believing that it will come, if not now, tomorrow. The Bangsamoro Basic Law, which will serve as the framework of our convergence, will be ours.

We continue to lay down the foundations of convergence, which the next administration can build upon towards the realization of ONE BANGSAMORO.

With the conclusion of the TRP, convergence is close at hand. - Jana Jill Gallardo

OPAPP UNITS

Usec. Jose I. Lorena

Rhaffi Jumdain, Lourdes Asiatico, Ma. Eleonor Navarro, Mary Veron Gay Asis, Rowena Lopez, Mohammad Dipatuan, Usec. Jose Lorena, Jana Jill Gallardo, Vanessa Vianca Pallarco, Aris Aglupus, Cesar Iribani, Charlie Ilagas


The Communications Group and Bangsamoro Communications Unit

YOU START WORKING at the Communications Group by hitting the ground running. You get to know your colleagues’ stories during long working hours, in long meetings during crisis, while in unheard of places during fieldwork; at press conferences; and over the occasional drinks that cap thaose stressful days and nights.

The history of the Communications Group is a side story to the ongoing narrative of the peace process in the Philippines. Its work requires proximity to the agency’s leadership and programs, which allowed the unit to experience the ups and downs of peace work, perhaps more directly than other units in OPAPP.

At the start of her term in 2010, the PAPP set the direction for better communications support to the agency. This resonated with the clamor of peace stakeholders for fast and updated reporting of the status of peace negotiations.

In response, the Media and Public Affairs Service of OPAPP inherited in 2010 was transformed into a fully functional Communications Unit by the start of 2011 with Director Polly Cunanan as the unit head, and Assistant Secretary Rose Romero as the supervising executive.

With a structure patterned after a campaign set-up, the Unit boasted by the middle of 2011, an improved

OPAPP UNITS

1st row: Hannah Rose Manaligod, Asec. Rosalie Romero, Erwina Peña. 2nd row: Kriselle Aquino, Patricia Bianca Tica, Irish Dominado, Shebana Alqaseer, Rosa Ilia Rafon, Charlotte Vicente, Dir. Aubrey Gail Mallari, Lester Niere, Joser Dumbrique. 3rd row: Bret Irvin Pangilinan, Dann Daryl Lasala, Kris Lanot Lacaba, Bashia Grafilo, Darwin Wally Wee, Roberto Capco, Marc Louis Siapno.

reach in quadmedia, better relations with media, and was churning press releases acknowledged as at par with PR industry standards.

This transformation would serve the unit and the agency well in managing the crises that would come OPAPP’s way in the years ahead. The Al Barka incident in 2011; the Zamboanga siege in 2013; the Mamasapano incident in 2015, are just a few of the major crises that the Communications unit worked with the other units to manage.

Over the years, the unit’s hard work helped cultivate the public’s confidence in the peace process, facilitated mainstreaming of peace


Bangsamoro Communications Unit: Joel Valino, Marvin Guevarra, Azenath Formoso, Mary Francis Rivera, Dir. Polly Michelle Cunanan, Paolo Cansino, Angela Carla Segovia, McJazer Malonda, Alaisah Pendatun, Ryan Israel Advincula, Mervin Gerellana.

and supported the constituency-building efforts of the agency.

By 2014, the Bangsamoro peace process would reap achievement after achievement that would expand exponentially its communications needs. This caused the Unit to evolve further to provide better services to all peace tables and programs of OPAPP.

In 2015, the Communications Unit became the Communications Group, its personnel were broken into teams providing specialized services – content development, creative, PR and marketing, media relations,

social media and news production. This move resulted in the devolution of communications teams to other peace tables and programs. It expanded its reach and created the Mainland Mindanao and ZamBaSulTa teams to cover the Southern Philippines.

The move also gave birth to a bigger Bangsamoro Communications team, with Dir. Polly Cunanan at the helm, its services solely dedicated to the needs of the Bangsamoro peace process.

The Bangsamoro Communications team would later be transferred

under the oversight of the Peace Panel for talks with the MILF, and become Bangsamoro Communications Unit. Its services are indispensable in the journey that this peace process will continue to tread towards the fulfillment of the promise of peace in the Bangsamoro.

Through time, the Communications Group has moved with the ebb and flow of the peace process. Those who will move beyond this administration will continue cultivating the soil from which the sweet fruits of peace will flourish—for what we do is not merely work; it is a way of life. - Marc Siapno

Asec. Rosalie RomeroDir. Aubrey Gail Mallari, Deputy Head for Operations

Dir. Polly Michelle Cunanan, Bangsamoro Communications Unit


IN FIVE ISSUES OVER 24 MONTHS, Kababaihan at Kapayapaan has focused on the work of Filipino women in government and civil society in advocating, promoting and building peace and development in the country. We have featured their passion and dedication, and their invaluable role in the promotion of societal harmony and the resolution of conflict in big and small ways.

They are negotiators hammering out peace agreements with rebels, cabinet members holding a peace and gender lens to government’s plans and programs, social workers delivering goods and services to devastated areas, development workers engaging communities on their needs and aspirations, NGO personnel bringing much-needed psychosocial and health services to conflict-affected neighborhoods.

They work in the cities and the grassroots, in sterile offices and godforsaken conflict areas. They run bureaucracies, local governments, halfway houses for returning rebels, and detention facilities. They listen, they teach, they counsel, they take risks, they lead. They are focused, tireless, determined to do their share in making a better country for women, children, soldiers, rebels, and all Filipinos.

In this fifth and final issue of Kababaihan at Kapayapaan, we honor these women and give them the last word.

Last Words

This is the perfect moment to find your place in the wide-open spaces of the peace process. Everyone is welcome, encouraged even, to look for ways and means to

support this noble endeavor. Roles have long been demolished and lines have long been blurred. It has become imperative for everyone — man, woman and child — to

find their niche in the peace process and contribute to attaining lasting peace in Mindanao. The generations to come deserve no less.

ANNA TARHATA SUMANDE BASMANHead of the GPH Legal Team for GPH-MILF Peace Process

I think having so many women across the table helped our counterparts to be more open to including women in their team. Just the fact that we were there, doing this job,

I think, made a statement.

IONA GRACIA JALIJALIDirector, GPNP-MILF Secretariat

The goal of women’s

participation is to attain

durable peace.YASMIN BUSRAN-LAO

Chief Executive Officer of the National Commission on

Muslim Filipinos

Uya kami na dara na baril o bala. Pumapasok kami sa mga areas naming ID lang ng DSWD ang

suot namin para ipakita sa kanila na hindi sila nakalimutan ng gobyerno. (We have no bullets or guns. We go to our areas wearing only our DSWD

IDs to show them that we – the government – have not forgotten them.)

KRISTI LOU SARABOSQUEZ DSWD Community Facilitator in Maragusan, Compostela Valley

“

Again the human cost (of war) — the destruction and death, the chaos and

filth in the evacuation centers, the human misery because of the war that was

raging in the hinterlands — bakit kailangan maging

ganito tayo (why do we have to be this way)? Why do

people have to be subjected to this kind of life?

MARIA LOURDES TISON Former Member, GPH Panel for Peace Negotations with the NDF

Herein lies the challenge: of finding a common ground, of finding the right words to cut through the crap and the gunfire, of matching word with

deed, resolve with will, of restoring integrity to words so that we do not

engage in wordplay and verbal sleight-of-hand, but mean what we say and say what we mean, of unlearning

war in order to wage peace.

JURGETTE HONCULADA Member, GPH Panel for

Peace Negotations with the NDF

Women have borne the brunt of decades of conflict, and change

must begin with them. There can be no healing and wholeness of

our body politic if women remain broken, insecure and violated.

SEC. TERESITA QUINTOS DELES Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process

Yes we are different, biologically, socially. Men traditionally carried arms, women gave birth. But equality is not about sameness. It is about

relationships founded on mutual respect and the dignity of both persons. It is no different from what the MILF wanted for the Bangsamoro — parity of esteem. The same ‘parity of esteem’

or mutual respect that is desired between the majority and the minority population is desirable as well between men and women.

MIRIAM CORONEL-FERRER Chair, GPH Panel for Talks with the MILF “

I believe in the inherent goodness of every person. That’s why we arenot giving up. Let us appeal and explain, perhaps they will listen,

they will have open minds, open hearts for us to finally have a chance for peace.

SITTI DJALIA TURABIN HATAMANRepresentative, Anak Mindanao party list“ “The trouble with the pursuit of peace is that it can only be as simple or

as complex as the people involved. Therefore, anyone who wants to be a ‘peace advocate’ should be comfortable with difficulty and willing to work with questions that might have

no ready answers. This is a thankless job: the only reward for the pursuit of peace is the promise of peace. Who knows whether we might ever get there? But most times

a promise is more than enough as something to live for.JOHAIRA WAHAB

Former Head of the GPH Legal Team for GPH-MILF Peace Process

Dear sisters, once more we stand on the threshold of change. The call of the hour is electoral politics. How do we count

women, and make women count, if we do not get our feet wet? How do we get a gendered reading, and writing, of history if we do not dirty our nails? We must engage in, even embrace,

politics in order to change it; there are no shortcuts. But what if politics changes us? My dear sisters,

we have been long enough in this game to know that if politics changes us, it will certainly be for the better.

SEC. TERESITA QUINTOS DELES Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process


Gender and Peace EventsMarch - December 2016

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

AUGUST

JULY

1

10

9

17

12

24

29

14

12-18

4th Week

Nuclear Free & Independent Pacific Day

Mothers’ Day

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Day

International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament

International Youth Day

International Day of UN Peacekeepers

Anniversary of the Signing of the Magna Carta of Women (RA 9710) (2009)

Bangsamoro Week of Peace

Protection and Gender-Fair Treatment of the Girl Child Week

1st Week National Women’s Week

4

29

International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action

Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare

4

19

20

29

26

30

International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression

World Humanitarian Day

World Refugee Day

International Day against Nuclear Tests

United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances

1-31National Women’s MonthTheme: “Kapakanan ni Juana, Isama sa Agenda!”

16 Anniversary of the Signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) (1998)

27Anniversary of the Signing of the GPH-MILF Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) (2014)

18Anniversary of the Signing of the GRP-MILF Agreement for General Cessation of Hostilities (1997)

24International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims

8-9Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during the Second World War

4Anniversary of the Signing of the GPH-CBA-CPLA Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) (2011)

8International Women’s DayTheme: “Pledge for Parity!”


Gender and Peace EventsMarch - December 2016

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

2

3

15

24-30

Last Week

10

12

6

21

26

Anniversary of the Signing of the GRP-MNLF Final Peace Agreement (1996)

International Day of Persons with Disabilities

International Day of Rural Women

Disarmament Week

Mindanao Week of Peace

Human Rights Day

National Day of Prayer for Peace and Reconciliation

Anniversary of the Signing of the GRP-RPM-P/RPA/ABB Peace Agreement (2000)

International Day of Peace

International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

1-30 National Peace Consciousness Month

1st Week Mindanao Week of Peace

2

20

11

25

International Day of Non-Violence

Universal Children’s Day

International Day of the Girl Child

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

10

19

World Science Day for Peace and Development

Anniversary of the Signing of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB) (2012)

13Anniversary of the Signing of the 1986 Mt. Data Peace Accord (Joint Memorandum of Agreement to a Cessation of Hostilities) between the GPH and the CBA-CPLA (1987)

6International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict

World Day for the Prevention of Abuse and Violence against Children and Youth

All issues are available online at www.opapp.gov.ph/resources/publications

Kababaihan at Kapayapaan is on its fifth and final issue.

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Kababaihan at Kapayapaan Issue 5

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