As part of the WFDA mission (World Forum for Democratization in Asia) I was in the team going to Zamboanga and Jolo. This was just a 3-day trip full of meetings. Our team consisted of 4 IID staffs, an American Professor (but resident of Japan) Paul, Nazwir from Indonesia (Aceh), Kristian from Spain and myself. Zamboanga City is also called "Asia's Latin City" because the Spanish influence is still quite visible or better hearable. In fact, they have a language which is called "Chabacano", it's a mix of Spanish and Filipino with a very strong Spanish tendency (The mayor gave us a Chabacano learning book).
Besides, we had three "angels", in other words 3 Muslim women who took care of us, guiding our way. The first stop after our arrival at the airport was the City Hall. There we met with the Mayor of Zamboanga City, Celso Lobregat. 
He was prepared to meet us and held a powerpoint presentation
regarding his position to the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) and the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE). As we already read before entering the City Hall, he doesn't want an inclusion of Zamboanga in the BJE.
After listening to his point of view we went on to a meeting with Civil Society organizations of Zamboanga City. This meeting was as well informing and interesting, although we all were tired from the early flight and traveling.
The last stop was the Western Mindanao Command, a headquarter of the army.
Of course, similar to all our other hosts, we were friendly welcomed, food and drinks were offered. But unfortunately, we were just "playing soft ball" because the army wasn't prepared to meet us and weren't able or refused to answer most of our ("hard ball") questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment