ADVANCING peace amid the suspension of government peace talks take on a new plane.
Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP) Undersecretary Danilo Encinas hinted the government can not afford a pause in its peace with the stalled peace talks.
With the peace agreements between the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines New Peoples Army National Democratic Front stalled, the government has to exhaust all means to achieve an end to the 40 year old insurgency.
Sharing the new government adopted strategy, Usec Encinas said, “you capacitate the ground so they can provoke the two parties to talk.”
Hoping to exactly do that, the Office of the PAPP now comes to Bohol to document a successful peace process which has been mulled as a new template for peace in other areas.
Admitting he did not imagine Bohols peace champions could start off with a worthy peace process, he said he is humbled by it.
During the Reflective and Generative Dialog on the Documentation of the Peace Building Good Practices at the Bohol Plaza October 22-23, Encinas cited Bohol achievements in peace which happens to be snagging in firsts in the country’s peace process history.
The forum was attended in by Bohol peace advocates who come from various sectors: church, civil society and government.
He noted that the convergence of all efforts in Bohol has baffled the OPAPP because it was a totally hard thong to replicate in other places with peace issues.
He also mentioned the army’s giving of lands to rebel returnees as a rare practice.
The OPAPP would like to know how the anti-poverty program has helped and what prompted rebels to go down and join the mainstreams despite a no amnesty package available for them.
He also said OPAPP wants to know what prompted the establishment and installation of the Local Monitoring Board as a local body that accepts and processes human rights violations complaints as alleged against the military and the insurgents.
Brought down to Bohol by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Conflict Prevention and Peace Building Program, the generative dialog was a venue to generate and evoke the strategies, which made Bohol successful in its present peace building efforts.
Since implementing the local programs, Bohol moved out of the country’s 20 poorest provinces and discouraged the insurgents’ four guerrilla fronts off Bohol into nearby provinces. (PIA)
