AT A SOLIDARITY CONFERENCE, MILF, AQUINO ADMINISTRATION PUSH PEACE AND BBL

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Rev. Dann Pantoja, PBCI President, greets Secretary Teresita ‘Ging’ Deles of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process while Chairman Mohagher Iqbal of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Peace Panel signs an autograph. Mindanao Solidarity Conference on the Bangsamoro, 02-05 December 2014, Davao City.

At the Mindanao Solidarity Conference on the Bangsamoro, held in the meeting hall of Davao City’s Grand Regal Hotel, Philippine Congressman Raymond Democrito C. Mendoza asked the assembled delegates of Mindanao’s civil society organizations (CSOs) to assist him and his fellow members of the ad hoc congressional committee on the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) by communicating the specific needs of each sector of Mindanawan society to the legislators who are currently hammering out the blueprint for the new juridical entity which, it is hoped, will provide a substantially autonomous homeland for the Moros of the southern Philippines, replacing the moribund Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), and which will be known as the Bangsamoro. Mendoza contended that the advent of the Bangsamoro – the culmination of years of negotiations between the Philippine government and the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – “might be the only opportunity [for us to] put down our arms and conclude a centuries-old war that has claimed thousands of lives and that has deprived the Bangsamoro people of economic and livelihood opportunities for so long.”

A previous attempt by negotiators from the Philippine government to reach a mutually acceptable settlement with the MILF failed horribly, resulting in a costly and bloody ground campaign between the MILF and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). The 2008 Memorandum of Understanding on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which forbid the Philippine government’s negotiators from signing it, whereupon the conflict on the ground recommenced with a vengeance. Mendoza urged the conference attendees to help insure that the BBL does not meet the same fate as the MO-AD. “Your groups must provide us with the specific legislative language you feel will best advance the BBL. […] It is specific language in the BBL which will ultimately address its efficacy and effectiveness as a law and meet the test of constitutionality.”

While the BBL is widely viewed as the best hope for an end to the decades-long armed struggle between Moro “secessionists and the AFP, the administrative reorganizations it proposes have aroused much anxiety because of their profound novelty in the context of the Philippine legal system. The BBL proposes to establish an “asymmetrical relationship” between the authority of the Philippine state and the jurisdiction of the Bangsamoro’s own parliamentary government, but there is wide confusion as to what an “asymmetrical relationship” will look like in practice. According to the Office of the President of the Philippines’ official website, the term “implies a special status of the Bangsamoro vis-a-vis the Central government that is different from that of local governments and administrative regions,” but it remains to be seen how this will play out on the ground. Mendoza cited the opinions of BBL critics who maintain “that to invoke ‘asymmetry’ is analogous to asking to be given a blank check.” By virtue of the BBL’s groundbreaking nature, the repercussions of each of its annexes, including “asymmetry,” are as yet untested and unknown. Believing nonetheless that the BBL is the way forward for Mindanao, Mendoza sought to put all of this uncertainty in context: “At the end of the day, anything political must necessarily involve a little suspension of disbelief.”

Can the Supreme Court of the Philippines suspend its disbelief as the Bangsamoro entity begins to operate? Will the Muslims and non-Muslims living in and around the current ARMM swallow their uncertainties and vote themselves into the Bangsamoro when each municipality holds its plebiscite on inclusion? What is certain is that many in the Aquino administration as well as in the MILF seem to have put all of their eggs in the Bangsamoro basket. When Secretary Teresitas Deles of the Office of the Presidential Advisor on the Peace Process opened the floor to questions following her lecture in support of the BBL, the conference attendees inquired as to the government’s Plan B should the BBL fail. Deles said that there was no Plan B, and that she and the rest of the Aquino administration have been focusing all of their energies on ensuring the success of Plan A – the BBL. The current MILF leadership has similarly staked the whole of its political capital on the realization of the Bangsamoro, as well as on the Moro people’s satisfaction with the newly formed political entity as the answer to their struggle for real autonomy. In his address to the Solidarity Conference, MILF Peace Panel Chairman Mohagher Iqbal warned of the consequences should the efforts of the BBL boosters fail: “The future will be very bleak. The MILF will suffer a fall-out, and most probably new and more radical leaders will emerge from the horizon and carry on the torch of the struggle, whether via the legitimate way or through the improbity of a weird approach. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), while we have no love lost with the group, is borne out of the chaos and blood-letting in the Middle East, a courtesy of the Western Powers.” In other words, if the opportunity to create a viable Bangsamoro is squandered, Mindanao may witness the rise of rebels whose methods are far more radical and destructive than those of the current MILF leadership.

If the BBL is in fact passed by the Congress and shown toleration by the Supreme Court, its true success or failure will be decided at the local level in each municipality and barangay – hence the politicians’ courtship of the CSOs gathered for the Mindanao Solidarity Conference on the Bangsamoro. In the years ahead, as new and untested jurisdictional and administrative arrangements are worked through one situation at a time, the real verdict on the Bangsamoro will emerge. For the sake of peace and human welfare in Mindanao, may God grant that the coming years will confirm and sustain the Bangsamoro.

However uncertain are the fortunes of the Bangsamoro, the negotiation process surrounding its formation is indisputably unique and worthy of the global admiration it has garnered. Secretary Deles reminded the CSO representatives that this joint effort by the MILF and the Philippine government has earned the praise of many international observers.

I know that this international observer was impressed by the evident ingenuousness both of Iqbal and of Deles. After all, in the Bangsamoro peace process, the MILF, an organization which has long been in active rebellion against the government and has prosecuted a war of secession from the Philippine state, is now working closely with the government in order to forge a compromise agreeable to both parties. Where I come from we only have two ways of ending our wars: either we force the unconditional surrender of our foes or we sign a truce so bitter that trade and diplomatic relations with our former opponents are suspended for decades. In American terms, the current rapprochement between the Philippine government and the MILF would be analogous to a collaboration between the administrations of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis to draft a compromise solution to the secession crisis. I would bet that even today most American northerners and southerners would find the suggestion of such a compromise both offensive and preposterous.

If, however, some of us view war as a greater evil than political compromise, we should look to the Philippines and observe what can be accomplished through a genuine dialogue between the opposing sides of a long and bitter conflict.

Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2014/12/at-solidarity-conference-milf-aquino-administration-push-peace/

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