How BBL, South China (West Phl) Sea, US and Aquino are intertwined

By its own avowal, the administration of President Benigno S. Aquino 3rd is to be gauged on how successful it has been in pushing the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL). As Cabinet Secretary on the Peace Process Teresita Deles pronounced it during the opening of the resumed Mindanao peace talks on January 12, 2012, “The Mindanao peace process is the centerpiece of the Aquino administration.” With barely a year left in the Aquino tenure at Malacañang and the Bangsamoro Basic Law, the product of the Mindanao peace negotiations, remaining unresolved in the Senate, the pronounced basis for evaluating the performance of President Aquino necessarily gives him a low, low grade.

The so-called peace process that produced the BBL was suspect from the very start. It came about as a result of US Ambassador Kristie Kinney’s visit with MILF Chief Al Haj Muhrad Ebrahim whom she traced all the way to his mountain lair. In that visit, Kinney convinced Murad to enter into peace talks with the Philippine government, then under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.