MANILA – Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez on Monday lauded the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) for its efforts to advance the peace process and stressed the agency’s crucial role in attaining just and lasting peace in the country.
“We see the OPAPP as very, very important. I think we should be able to congratulate them because of the achievements they have already secured,” he said before other lawmakers during the agency’s pre-plenary budget hearing with the House Committee on Appropriations.
“The OPAPP is a small office. It has a small budget of P351 million only but it is charged with a very vital function of achieving peace in our country,” he stressed.
Rodriguez, in particular, commended the progress made by OPAPP and the peace panel negotiating with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the ongoing peace talks.
“I had the good fortune to be an observer in the 39th formal talks, and I saw the sincerity of both panels (government and MILF). I saw in their faces and their actuations that there is a very big chance that this (peace) will be achieved,” he stated, adding that the attacks perpetrated by the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) forces led by Nur Misuari will not affect the peace process with the MILF.
Spearheaded by Deles, OPAPP is mandated to oversee, coordinate, and integrate the implementation of the comprehensive peace process by virtue of Executive Order No. 3 series of 2001. It is the government arm tasked with the government’s negotiations for political settlements with rebel groups recognized by government as having legitimate grievances, as well as pursuing the complete implementation of previously signed peace pacts.
OPAPP reported of currently having five peace tables: those with the MILF and the CPP/NPA/NDF for negotiations on political settlement; the one with the MNLF that is currently undertaking a Tripartite Implementation Review process with the group and facilitated by the OIC-PCSP; and the ones with the CBA-CPLA that signed a closure agreement last 4 July 2011, and with the RPM-P/RPA/ABB that is expected to sign a closure agreement soon.
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