SENATOR Miriam Defensor Santiago
SENATOR Miriam Defensor Santiago

SENATOR Miriam Defensor Santiago on Wednesday said the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) is unconstitutional because it violates the principle of constitutional supremacy.

Santiago, who heads the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments, noted that the agreement establishes a sub-state, which is not allowed by the Constitution.

She explained that what is allowed by the law is the establishment of an autonomous region.

But the entity that will be established to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is not a mere autonomous region but a sub-state that will exercise certain sovereign powers that should be reserved only for the central government.

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The heads of the negotiating panels of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed the pact on March 27 in Malacañang.

Santiago cited Part 7, paragraph 4, subparagraph (b) of the Bangsamoro agreement, defining one of the functions of the Transition Commission that she said she finds ridiculous.

The provision empowers the commission “to work on proposals to amend the Philippine Constitution for the purpose of accommodating and entrenching in the Constitution the agreements of the Parties whenever necessary without derogating from any prior past agreements.”

“The basic function of a Constitution is to list the powers of the state and to list the rights of the citizens. The Constitution is a list of sovereign powers that are reserved for the government, meaning to say, all the three branches. This is the principle of constitutional supremacy. It is beyond ridiculous to state that the Philippine Constitution should accommodate the agreements of the Parties whenever necessary,” Santiago, who is also a constitutional law expert, said.

The agreement embodies the consent of the executive branch to amend the Philippine Constitution, in order to accommodate the agreement, she added.

Santiago said preliminary studies show that the agreement apparently contains

provisions very similar to those contained in the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), which the Supreme Court earlier declared unconstitutional.

The senator explained that the MOA-AD and the Bangsamoro agreement appear to facilitate the secession of the Bangsamoro from the country in a manner similar to the secession of Kosovo and Crimea.

Santiago listed several reasons why she believes that the Bangsamoro will turn into a sub-state: The powers of the central government shall be determined by the agreement; the ARMM will be abolished by a mere agreement with the MILF, allocation to the Bangsamoro of all powers exercised by the national government over local government units; and exclusive Bangsamoro jurisdiction over natural resources in areas covered by the agreement.

The senator said the Annex on Power Sharing gives to the Bangsamoro so-called “exclusive powers,” which are defined as a tautology, as “powers or matters over which authority and jurisdiction pertain to the Bangsamoro government.”

She noted that only the Bangsamoro shall be under a ministerial form of government, while the rest of the country will operate under a presidential form of government.