By EMPL
www.nordis.net

Baguio City — In an interview, Rafael Baylosis, member of the NDFP Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reforms (RWCSER) said the upcoming consultations with the people of the Cordillera during the celebration of the 27th Cordillera Day in Lacub, Abra will further enrich the draft of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER).

The draft will be negotiated on between the Government of the Republic of Philippines panel (GPh) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).

“The issues concerning the Indigenous Peoples of the country have to be clearly defined and stated in the CASER to ensure their right to Ancestral Lands, right to Self-determination and other specific demands would be forwarded and acted upon,” Baylosis elaborated.

On the other hand, Beverly Longid, president of Katribu Party list iterated, “the indigenous peoples of Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao including the Lumads have persistently held on to their identity and their ancestral homeland even in the face of development aggression, militarization, eviction and discrimination. We need positive steps to address our concerns and we will forward our proposals during this peace consultation.”

Ednar Dayanghirang, a mandaya native from Davao Oriental and a member of the GPh peace panel, confirmed his attendance to the Cordillera Day consultation.

NDF CASER proposal

Randall Echanis explained, “In the CASER draft of the NDFP, the huge task of addressing the root causes of the armed conflict begins by identifying the social forces, institutions, and their processes that have hampered our country’s progress and development and kept it backward in economic and social terms.”

He said, “the NDFP CASER draft identifies two social virtues as its core principles in addressing the roots of the armed conflict: One is upholding of our economic sovereignty and independence. The other virtue is social justice. This virtue shall guide us toward implementing a thoroughgoing redistribution of our social wealth in order to do away with the grossly iniquitous social and economic relations that bind our people to a life of exploitation, poverty, and extreme want.”

“With these two virtues as core principles, the NDFP CASER next draws the two main programs which are crucial to addressing the roots of the armed conflict. These are genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization,” he concluded

Baylosis also said the NDFP panel has been developing and incorporating the urgent and basic social and economic reforms in their draft CASER even after the past Arroyo Regime unilaterally ended the peace negotiations in 2004. They have redrafted the two sections of the working draft which are “Economic Sovereignty and National Patrimony” and “Agrarian Reform and Agricultural development.”

“Before the breakdown of the peace talks, both RWCs of the NDFP and GPh had been able to take up and more or less agree on the text of two sections of the working draft: the Preamble and the Declaration of Principles.”

Meanwhile, Windel Bolinget, CPA Chairman said they are also drafting proposals specific to the Cordillera peoples demands, aspirations and recommendations to be submitted to the two panels on April 27 consultation. # nordis.net