General features of the MILF comprehensive compact draft**

1. It is a formula of peace through the exhaustion of all democratic remedies to solve a home-grown sovereignty-based conflict, which, following the same approach, other similar global sovereignty-based conflicts have also been successfully resolved, such as in South Sudan and Northern Ireland; 2. It is a proposal to correct and solve the one-sidedness or imbalance of totality of relationship between Filipinos and Moros, the former continue to be rulers and sole decision-makers, while the latter as mere second class citizens without any role in national decision-making; 3. It gives modest recognition and justice to Mindanao, the ancestral homeland of the unconquered Moros, as historically considered and treaties-entrenched foreign territory not only during the Spanish regime in the Philippines but even during the American regime when they created the Moro Province, which they administered separately from Luzon and the Visayas; 4. It affords the people of the future Bangsamoro state to have a modest share and taste of the remaining 7-9 percent of the lands, wealth and resources of what used to be 98 percent at the turn of the last century; 5. It balances the issues of states sovereignty and peoples right to self-determination, an issue not even the United Nations has fully succeeded to settle to this day; 6. It provides for an asymmetrical state-substate relationships, wherein powers of the central government and state government are clearly stated, aside from those powers they jointly exercise, which are also defined in this draft; 7. It gives modest recognition to the Moro aspiration for separate national identity, as Bangsamoro, while retaining their Filipino citizenship; 8. It is a formula that maximizes peoples creativity, resourcefulness, initiative, and determination to survive and develop themselves by their own sweats and tears, with their ties with the central government effectively intact and recognized; 9. It is a formula that perfectly blends the modern-day democratic principle that sovereignty resides in the people and the ingredients of Islamic principle of shura (consultation) whereby people participate in running their affairs;

10. It provides for a clear mechanism whereby implementation of the agreement and the normalization process go hand-in-hand. In this scheme, mutual trust is effectively developed and entrenched as the parties continue to comply with their commitments, with the participation of an international third party monitoring group; and 11. It is a win-win formula that benefits not only Moros and the indigenous peoples, but also the Filipinos and the government in Manila. The dividends of peace and the lack of war itself will reach every home not only in the conflict affected areas in Mindanao, but Mindanao as whole and the Philippines in general. Besides refugees from Mindanao will no longer go to Sabah and therefore ceases to be a recurring problem to the Government of Malaysia.

---------------------------** Introductory statement of Mohagher Iqbal, Chairman of the MILF peace panel, after he formally submitted to his counterpart in the Philippine government the revised draft of the MILF on the comprehensive compact, which contained the proposed negotiated political settlement of the Moro Question and the armed conflict in Mindanao on February 10, 2011.