Analysis
Self-inflicted dismemberment
By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:54:00 08/08/2008
Filed Under: Mindanao peace process
MANILA, Philippines—The Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) establishing the expanded Bangsamoro homeland sketches a map that defines the partition of the Philippines for the first time in its history.
The map presents a grotesque territorial truncation of the Republic. It adds to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) territory twice the size of the original area. The MOA seeks to enlarge the area to include the ARMM (Sulu, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan and Marawi City); six municipalities in Lanao del Norte, hundreds of villages in the provinces of Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Norte and North Cotabato, which voted to become part of the ARMM in 2001. It also proposes to include in the Bangsamoro “ancestral domain” two municipalities of Palawan, Zamboanga del Norte and Zamboanga Sibugay.
These areas consolidate the resource-rich provinces on Mindanao Island under the jurisdiction of the proposed government of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity, clothed by the MOA with vast powers, including setting up its own security force, the disposition economic resources in its territory, fiscal autonomy, its own system of banking and finance, civil service, education and legislative and electoral institutions and its own “basic law.”
The MOA is vague (probably on purpose) about whether the “basic law” is separate from the Philippine Constitution or subordinate to the Constitution. There is no single word in the MOA referring to the Constitution.
The map of the expanded Bangsamoro “ancestral domain” forms a crazy-quilt pattern of territorial distribution far worse than the gerrymandering of congressional districts. The powers granted by the MOA to the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity far exceed the wildest vision for the federalist structure proposed by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel along the lines of semi-autonomous regional governments and which follow the divisions of the 16 senatorial districts in the pre-martial law political system.
The MOA seeks to establish what amounts to a new state with “a defined territory” and “a system of governance suitable and acceptable to (the Bangsamoro) as a distinct dominant people.”
The territorial formation lays the ground for partition of the Philippines, a sort of political experiment in a negotiated establishment of a separate state. Its concepts have no precedents in the history of partitions of nations. They are different in the sense that the more celebrated partitions in history were mediated by the interventions of external powers, as in the partition of Poland or of British India into India and Pakistan.
Poland was partitioned three times in the second half of the 18th century by Austria, Prussia and Russia. The first partition was in August 1772, the second in January 1793, and the third in October 1795. A fourth partition took place in 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The first three partitions changed the map of Central Europe. Poland as a state was wiped off the map of Europe.
By contrast, the partition sought by the MOA was not brought about by the armed intervention of foreign powers, although the negotiations over the Bangsamoro homeland were brokered by Malaysia, which acted as host for the peace talks. The talks were pushed by President Macapagal-Arroyo to chalk up points for her embattled government in an effort to boost its legitimacy.
The territories ceded were the demands of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. These were the territories of their choice, to which the government did not appear to offer resistance. The MILF appeared to have dictated their own terms on territorial expansion. The government negotiating panel agreed to an agreement in which it became a party to a self-inflicted dismemberment of the national territory.
Filipino officials in areas sought to be incorporated into the expanded Bangsamoro homeland are up in arms over the issue that the territories in which they live are being ceded without consulting them and without their consent. Their protest prompted them to file petitions with the Supreme Court for a temporary restraining order to stop the signing of the MOA.
The central and transcendental issue raised by the petition is the sovereignty of the Republic over the proposed Bangsamoro homeland. The heart of the sovereignty issue is the dispute over territorial cession without the consent of the inhabitants of ceded territories. This issue has resonance to the Filipino public. It is the source of the widespread public backlash of opinion against the MOA.
The Philippine negotiators did not seem to be aware of the fact that most wars in history arose from territorial disputes.
The question about secrecy in the negotiations involving national sovereignty and national territory is ultra-sensitive and inflammatory. But the key question is: Did the panel buy peace in Mindanao at the high price of compromising national sovereignty and dismembering the national territory?
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