Press Release
October 27, 2007

PIMENTEL URGES ARROYO GOV'T ANEW TO OFFER FEDERALISM
IN PEACE TALKS WITH MILF

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. (PDP-Laban) today reiterated his proposal for the creation of a BangsaMoro federal state as a forerunner or prototype of the federal system of government being contemplated by the Arroyo government.

Pimentel said the Arroyo government can show that it is serious in pushing for a federal system by now formally offering to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front the setting up of a BangsaMoro federal state, in fulfillment of the aspiration of the Muslims in Mindanao for genuine autonomy.

He said the proposed federal state in Muslim Mindanao could help break the almost year-long deadlock in the peace negotiation between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front over the issue of ancestral domain.

"Let me say for the nth time that the creation of a federal state of the BangsaMoro will be the key to breaking the impasse that has derailed the peace talks," the senator from Mindanao said.

"If President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is sincere in the search for a responsive system of government and in her avowals that she is for peace in Mindanao, she should instruct her negotiators to offer federalism as a way out of the recurrent violence rocking Muslim Mindanao."

"If the Malacañang's timetable is to have the federal system installed by 2012, that is a good procedure because this is something that cannot be done in haste," the minority leader said. "There are many things that have to be discussed and I am therefore in favor of starting the discussion of the federalism proposal as early as possible not necessarily in the halls of Congress but to bring the issue out to the people."

He said the Senate and House of Representatives must first agree on the mode for amending the Constitution although he is inclined to favor the holding of a Constitutional Convention instead of converting Congress into a Constituent Assembly to ensure the independence of the amendment process.

Pimentel stressed that the proposal of his party to replace the highly-centralized unitary system with a federal system has been a foremost objective of the PDP-Laban, of which he is chairman, since it was born in 1982.

"I have always advocated the adoption of the federal system of government. Now that this proposal is being resurrected, I am supporting it," he said. But let no one commit the mistake of taking advantage of Charter Change to extend the term of Gloria under the new form of government, because I will oppose that," he said.

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