The Tripoli Agreement

After the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) leadership relented to opt for political autonomy from independence at the 1974 Kuala Lumpur OIC Meeting, President Ferdinand Marcos dispatched his First Lady to serenade Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi and to inform him the GRP is ready to talk peace with the MNLF. The message was to seek the pleasure of the Libyan leader to broker the first international peace negotiation between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the MNLF. (The Cause of the Moro people was first discussed at the 1973 OIC Meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)

Backed by a battery of legal luminaries of international repute and a cunning political leadership, the GRP panel appeared like a mighty “Goliath” facing a Moro “David” with the spineless OIC as the third party arbiter. In spite of the disparity in the credentials of both panels, the issue of truth and justice was winning points for the MNLF in the plenary sessions. In fact, the first 15 provisions of the draft Agreement were all favourable to the latter. With that, jubilation and high hopes virtually pervaded the ‘atmospheric pleasure’ among MNLF members and supporters at home and abroad.

But true to their cunning-upbringing and mastery of political treachery and deceit, the GRP panel reserved the last laugh for Filipinos. They fought hard to insert the 16th provision of the draft agreement which proved to be the lethal bullet that killed the Tripoli Agreement from being implemented in the interest of peace and stability in Muslim Mindanao. The GRP panel argued that such provision will afford the Government to implement the Accord with ease in accordance to the country’s Constitution. Thirty two years since the signing of the Tripoli Agreement on December 23, 1976, the OIC and MNLF panels could only encapsulate their collective humiliations at being taken for a ride by a cunning adversary. They found themselves like helpless pawns on the chessboard of the GRP’s political game. President Marcos went on to unilaterally “implement” the Tripoli Agreement virtually without the participation of the MNLF and OIC. The branded form of an electoral system that ensured Marcos lifetime stranglehold on the presidency was visibly applied by the GRP in all of the Plebiscites to justify Manila’s designs for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

What could have been the most viable vehicle for peace and stability in Muslim Mindanao and the region, the Tripoli Agreement turned out to be another instrument for continued colonial strangulation and depravity of the Muslim minority in that part of the world. The Bangsamoro people found their political and human situation becoming worst than at any time prior to the advent of the Tripoli Agreement. Worst still was when the MNLF was given the opportunity to run the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the first test of the Front’s political maturity which mirrored the MNLF’s subservience to the status quo.