Questions about the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (Part I )
One need not go to college or even read the provisions of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law to gauge the incompetence of those people entrusted to negotiate that perfidious agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Reading the long and tedious draft, I could see that they did not know their assignment, or much more anticipated the consequences of their overzealous desire to make peace but at a price of selling the country down the river. With the blessing of this pretending-to-be-honest government, they practically assisted the enemies of the State in creating their own state carved right from our own territory. The very title, Bangsamoro Basic Law, advanced by the MILF for the negotiations clearly indicates there was something wrong.
The title already reduced their role as proxies for the panel whom they were supposed to negotiate. Such is the case because the government is now the one campaigning for its ratification based on the very title insisted by the MILF. Invariably, where the secessionists failed to win in the battlefield, they won it on the negotiating table.
Such is the case, for instead of widening the parameters for negotiations to give substance to the concept of autonomy, they gave away all that were demanded from them, forgetting that negotiation is not about independence. Their duty is to find a political solution to the conflict, and autonomy was the ideal formula, always having in mind that the sovereignty of the Republic is indivisible and non-negotiable. Our panel should have been firm enough to say NO to the festering demands of the MILF, making it clear to them that negotiation is not an unconditional surrender.
To begin with, the term Bangsamoro means a Muslim or Moro state, and the Basic Law has reference to the constitution of that state about to be created with our stupid consent and assistance. Our unqualified acceptance of the title Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) that is about to be ratified by our rubber-stamp Congress is telling of the gross incompetence and traitorous tendency of this government. The implication is serious because the MILF, even under the feigned status as autonomous, will never concede of allowing two constitutions to operate within the territory they won out of our sheer stupidity. Their Basic Law is their only constitution or charter, and they will not allow any other constitution to supersede their basic law. The test to that is after we ratify that sellout Agreement, they would then proceed to stop us from enforcing our Constitution in the areas ceded to them. They would not even agree to the idea of bringing the issue to the Supreme Court knowing that the latter only recognizes the Philippine Constitution.
Once that happens, that would spell trouble, especially if the MILF leadership would insist that the issue can only be resolved either before the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Arbitration Court, or before the UN Security Council should a conflict erupt. In effect, those nincompoops only opened the gates of hell for a renewed and bigger conflict with the government placed on a defensive for reneging on what it agreed, and for acting in bad faith. Our negotiators swallowed hook, line and sinker all the demands of that Malaysians stooge. Maybe they were under pressure, much that it was not only Malaysia that supported the MILF, but also US, Japan and other foreign powers interested in the minerals and oil that could be extracted in the area.
To cover up their stupidity, they now want Congress to do the job of retouching what they bungled on the negotiations, which is equally stupid much that it would be tantamount to an imposition, for which the other party could use as alibi to reject. In fact, after the signing of the agreement in Malacañang on March 27, 2014 witnessed at that by the principal broker of the MILF, our panel headed by now Justice of the Supreme Court Marvic Leonen and succeeded by Prof. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, with Senen Bacani, Dr. Hamid Barra, Yasmin Busran Lao, and alternate-member Mayor Ramon Piang, Sr. as members, the task of ensuring the ratification of the BBL was handed to us, specifically to Teresita Quintos-Deles, Presidential Adviser for the Peace Process, when it should be the proponent that should campaign for it.
In that, one could see that Malacañang down to the last man in the negotiating panel did not have the foresight that there could never be peace in Southern Philippines for as long as the Sultan of Sulu and the Muslim Tausugs are excluded from any comprehensive peace agreement, and that would include a final settlement to our Sabah claim. They even exhibited their ignorance that the origin of the conflict with which they now want to put to an end began with our Sabah claim with some traitors led by Nur Misuari creating a separatist movement trained, funded and supported by the present broker of the MILF to thwart our legitimate claim.
The karma for which Misuari did in isolating the Sultan of Sulu is now haunting him. The objective of his neo-Maoist adventurism in forming the Moro National Liberation Front was to hit two birds with one stone: one, to separate Mindanao, Sulu, Basilan and Palawan from the country, and two, sabotage our Sabah claim using their separatist uprising as ruse to place the Philippines at a disadvantageous position of having to fend off a bloody secessionist rebellion. Now that Misuari has been defanged by his own enemies, he now clings on to the sarong of the Sultan to keep visible his shattered leadership whose followers now realize his treachery and flip-flapping in wanting to reach an agreement based on self-aggrandizement.
For the fact that nothing about our Sabah claim was mentioned in the so-called Bangsamoro Basic Law is an ominous indication that the MIFL has no plans to take up our claim whether on behalf of the government or on behalf of the Sultan of Sulu. What is obvious is that the PNoy administration is seeking an excuse to drop our claim, and the MILF about to do it for him. Our ratification of the BBL, as far as the MILF and its Malaysian brokers are concerned, would amount to officially dropping our claim. Neither could the Sultan of Sulu or his heirs bring their Sabah claim to other tribunals because under the proposed the BBL, the only authority recognized to represent the Muslims in Mindanao, including the Sultan of Sulu and the Tausugs, the Sambals, the Yakans, and the Badjaos is the leadership coming from the Central Mindanao-based MILF.
Some would even venture out to say that our ratification of the BBL could possibly abrogate the centuries-old Sultanate of Sulu. For whatever power and influence the Sultan may invoke to govern Sulu archipelago to maintain the loyalty of the Tausugs, he must first secure permission from the MILF whose leadership comprise mostly of Maranao and Maguindanao tribes that also have their long history of distrust and discord with the Tausugs, not to say that such ticklish possibility could be instigated by Malaysia.
rpkapunan@gmail.com
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