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On Thursday the government announced that there has
been a breakthrough in the effort to resume stalled negotiations for
a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The
former Armed Forces of the Philipines Chief of Staff, Gen.
Hermogenes Esperon, Jr., who is President Gloria Arroyo’s new
Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, told the press that on
Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur the government and the MILF had agreed to
resume the talks that the MILF had abandoned in December 2007.
The talks are always held in
Kuala Lumpur because Malaysia has been the host of these
negotiations since they began. The Moro separatist rebels suspended
the talks because they took exception to the Philippine panel’s
version of the agreements reached so far about the thorniest issue
of all—“ancestral domain.”
What angered the MILF was the
phrase “constitutional process” which the Philippine panel used
in its draft of the summary of the negotiations. The MILF spokesmen
angrily claimed that the Philippine government panel was reneging on
an agreement arrived at that the future final agreement would not
have to conform to any Philippine law, not even the Constitution.
It turned out that the Philippine
panel never agreed to violate the Constitution or any laws. What did
happen was that the government panel never mentioned the
Constitution or adverted to submitting the agreement to our
Republic’s “constitutional processes.” The MILF took that
silence about the Constitution to mean that the government
negotiators had made the positive act of agreeing to ignore the
Constitution and “constitutional processes.”
We do not know if any of the
government negotiators said anything to their MILF counterparts to
make the latter believe that the GRP-MILF agreement would not need
to go through legal and constitutional processes. But if this were
so, the MILF should have seen the whole thing to be futile and
impossible. For terms of an agreement that would change the system
of our government, the names and territorial boundaries of our
provinces and such important things, can only be legally and morally
binding if they conform to our existing laws and our Constitution.
MILF’s declared objectives
One should not be surprised,
however, that the MILF, in its negotiations with the Philippine
government, proceeds from the premise that agreements made between
the two sides need not comply with Philippine laws and the
Constitution. For the MILF has always declared its objectives to be
that of setting up an independent Bangsamoro state, of separating
from the Philippines. The MILF has never accepted the Philippine
Republic as a legal entity or the legal sovereign of the so-called
“ancestral domain” of the Moros.
Rejoice over resumption of
talks
We should, in any case, rejoice
over news that GRP-MILF negotiations will continue and that another
meeting is scheduled on July 24 in KL.
As Gen. Esperon tells it, the
MILF has accepted the government’s offer to create a federal state
for the Philippine Muslims, giving the Muslim government of that
future state control over the resources of the area but still
sharing some of these resources with the Philippine central
government.
The “Bangsamoro Juridical
Entity” will include the present Autonomous Region in Muslim
Mindanao (ARMM), which is a constitutionally created Philippine
geographical subdivision.
Plebiscites in those areas that
the MILF wants to include in this expanded ARMM will find out if the
majority of the Muslims and Christians now living there agree to be
made part of the Bangsamoro federal state. What happens if the
voters of a locality refuse to be part of the Bangsamoro, Gen.
Esperon did not say.
Plebiscites will be held in 712
villages of Lanao del Norte, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat,
Zamboanga-Sibugay and Palawan.
Just to hold the plebiscites, a
constitutional amendment is necessary. The expansion of ARMM, the
redefinition of the rights of the provinces that will become part of
the Bagsamoro federal state, the change in form of government –
from a unitary republic to a federal republic – and many other
consequences of accommodating the desires of the MILF leaders will
all require constitutional amendments.
Self-determination chant
We hope the MILF leaders have now
realized that legal and constitutional processes must be followed
and that the sovereignty of the Philippine Republic must be upheld
and never be diminished.
We hope and pray that the
MILF’s leaders understand and accept that they must stop chanting
their desire for “self determination”—separation and
independence from the Philippine Republic. For if they don’t stop,
it can only mean that what they want is war and not the development
of Mindanao and the prosperity of the Moro people.
Perhaps they want to Balkanize
Mindanao. Some foreign powers may find that prospect pleasing and
advantageous to their interest.
Filipinos must be ready and
willing to defend the integrity of our Republic.
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