GPH panel member Hernani Braganza reach out to NDFP panel member Fidel Agcaoili as Royal Norwegian Government Peace Process Advisor Miriam Ehl and Elisabeth Slattum look on.
The Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) held a panel-to-panel meeting on August 23 that ended with both parties seeing eye to eye with the first three items in the talks agenda. There were five items in the agenda the parties agreed in the June 15 Joint Statement signed in Oslo.
First, both panels concur to reaffirm agreements signed during peace negotiations from The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 “subject to enhancements that may be mutually agreed upon later by both panels.”
The previous binding and bilateral agreements that were reaffirmed include The Hague Joint Declaration, the agreement that set the framework of the talks including its four substantive agenda; the agreement on the formation and operationalization of working committees for the four substantive agenda signed in 1995; the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) of 1995, that is meant to provide conditions conducive to free discussion and movement of NDFP personnel involved in the peace negotiations to make negotiations possible; and, the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) of 1998, only one of the four substantive agenda the two parties have agreed.
Second, both parties agreed to reconstitute the JASIG list. The NDFP panel presented the reconstituted list of holders of the NDFP document of identification (DI) that gives them protection by the JASIG, and the list was acknowledged by the GPH panel.
List contains 54 names of publicly-known consultants, including those in the NDFP panel and the consultants that have been detained by the GPH, and 87 “assumed names.”
Third and last for the day, both parties agreed to accelerate the peace process and set the timeline for the completion of the three remaining items in the substantive agenda: social and economic reforms; political and constitutional reforms; and, end of hostilities and disposition of forces.
The Reciprocal Working Committees on Social and Economic Reforms met in the afternoon and agreed to hold another meeting in September. They also agreed to strive to come up with the draft of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms within six months from that meeting.
The GPH noted that the “negotiating panels only took four hours, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., to settle minor conflicting positions on the three substantive issues during a marathon session that was punctuated on several instances by laughter and light banter.”
The GPH and NDFP panels are set to take up the amnesty declaration for the release of all detained political prisoners and mode of interim ceasefire, the last two agenda in the June 15 Oslo statement, in their panel-to-panel meeting on August 24 and 25.