Fight vs MOA-AD not over yet, says Zambo City mayor
By DYBORRHAE JEWEL MENDOZA-REYES, ABS-CBN Zamboanga | 11/04/2008 1:40 AM
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ZAMBOANGA CITY- The Zamboanga City government is not yet taking off the streamers protesting against the aborted Bangsamoro Juridical Entity deal between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippine government.
Zamboanga City Mayor Celso Lobregat said the fight is not yet over on the constitutionality issue of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain. Lobregat disclosed that he received information an intervener has filed a petition to the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision on the constitutionality issue of the MOA-AD.
Lobregat identified the petitioner as the Muslim Legal Assistance Foundation Incorporated, represented by Atty. Nasser Maro Hamsalic, who he said submitted their fifty-one page motion Friday.
The streamers that said “Yes to Peace, No to BJE” were posted around the city on August at the height of the controversial aborted signing of the MOA-AD between the government and MILF. Lobregat earlier said they will eventually take them off when a fifteen-day period after the SC ruled on the unconstitutionality of the MOA-AD has lapsed.
Lobregat said that he had talked with Press Secretary Jesus Dureza when the SC decision on MOA-AD finally came out on October and that Malacañang will no longer file a motion to reconsider the foiled agreement.
But instead of Malacañang, a foundation appeared before the SC to ask for a reversion of the decision.
“I have talked to mayors of Iligan and other cities who were with us during the protest and we agreed to ask our lawyers to already look into this and prepare,” Lobregat said, adding that the high court is bound to ask for comment from the earlier interveners, such as Zamboanga City, on the petition filed by the foundation.
