MALAYSIA's "tough-love" stance over the tortuous negotiations towards a durable, comprehensive peace on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao seems to be paying off.

We earlier pulled out the bulk of our contingent of peace monitors from the island out of frustration over the lack of progress in peace talks between the Philippine government and rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The rest of the Malaysian contingent is slated to return home next month.

The opposing Philippine sides lately seem to have overcome a major obstacle over territory, and formal peace talks are expected to restart in Kuala Lumpur any moment.

While all this is encouraging news -- and if a formal peace pact to create the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity is eventually forged, Malaysia can reasonably indulge in a spot of self-congratulation after having invested much time, manpower and energy over several years in this -- it is best not to be unrealistic about what peace may eventually bring.

We have a precedent of peace forged between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front, which resulted in the creation of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The intervening years have been largely a disappointment. Those living within the borders of this supposedly autonomous region hardly enjoy any fruits of peace, aside from the obvious absence of armed conflict.
The Philippines as a whole seems to have an altogether outsized appetite for dashing the hopes of its own people and those outside who wish it well. All the very best intentions apparently will eventually end up for naught. Nothing justifies such a grim prognosis more than the continuing shambles of the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines -- East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) that started off with such high ideals and hopes in the mid-1990s.

I distinctly recall some years ago at one of those interminable series of meetings of all the good and great of BIMP-EAGA in the North Sulawesi capital of Manado in Indonesia, when during dinner the head of the Malaysian delegation privately asked, almost in frustration, what could be behind the lack of any tangible progress.

As one of the top bureaucrats of our venerable Economic Planning Unit then, she had to be mystified that what had been a largely Philippine initiative towards adopting the Malaysian model of economic development had seemed to flounder over an excess of excuses.

I have often pondered the same question, but I think a Filipino scholar's own commentary this week sums it up best. Economist Alex Magno, writing his regular column in the Philippine Star newspaper, posited that the neatest solution to the "Mindanao problem" is to immediately declare ARMM a special economic zone with no restrictions on trade and investment.

He said the "economically liberated zone will likely lead the country in the pace of economic growth. It will lure the petrodollar-rich Islamic countries into the once-troubled area, creating a regional base for industries, trade and commercial activities".

But Magno went on to say this solution would not be attractive to existing local elites nor other vested interests: "The Manila government, and all the do-gooder groups surrounding the "peace process" like cottage industries enveloping the manor, are trapped in an ancient paradigm. The problem is a political one and the solution can only be political."

The Philippines prides itself as Asia's oldest democracy. But it is a democracy grafted onto deeply entrenched vested interests. Yet we keep hearing democracy is the answer for one and all, without exception.This circuitous and never-ending political argument always leaves one intellectually drained. But it also makes me deeply grateful we have never been trapped in that "ancient paradigm" here in Malaysia.