PHILIPPINES:ALMOST 130,000 people have fled their homes following clashes between the Philippines military and Muslim separatist rebels in the central Mindanao province of North Cotabato, according to officials.
The military launched air and ground attacks over the weekend when hundreds of rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) failed to comply with a government deadline to leave about a dozen villages in North Cotabato.
Political leaders in the largely Christian province about 885km (550 miles) south of Manila are opposing a landmark peace deal with the MILF. The attacks came days after the Philippines supreme court blocked government representatives from signing the deal.
Despite the fighting, the government proceeded with voting yesterday for government posts in the autonomous region encompassing neighbouring predominantly Muslim areas of Mindanao.
"Generally, the elections there [were] very, very peaceful. The turnout is very, very good," said José Melo, chairman of the commission on elections, indicating 50 to 60 per cent of the region's 1.7 million voters took part.
Poll officials also used the elections to test automated vote-counting technology being considered for the 2010 presidential and legislative polls.
Fighting has been confined to five towns in North Cotabato, but the use of heavy bombardment and air attacks by government forces quickly raised the number of displaced families from 21,211 before the weekend to 129,819, according to the government's disaster management agency. The number of affected villages rose from just over a dozen to 42.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's government and the 12,500-strong MILF rebel army have been holding talks since 2001 in an effort to address the three-decade separatist conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people.
An earlier peace deal with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), from which the MILF split in the 1970s, has failed to bring peace to Mindanao.
The armed forces and the MILF signed a ceasefire deal in 2003 that has largely held in spite of occasional clashes.
However, observers are worried that government mishandling of the peace process, particularly Ms Macapagal's failure to forge a broad consensus in support of the new peace deal, could lead to fighting, not just between the MILF and the armed forces, but also between the Muslim rebels and Christian militias fearful of losing land and property to the MILF.
"The renewed fighting in North Cotabato goes to show that when the government bungles the peace negotiations, it is the citizens who suffer," said Risa Hontiveros, a lawmaker and peace advocate.
- (Financial Times service)