THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE REPRESENTATIVES of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front regarding the legal personality and rights of the so-called Bangsamoros has provoked heated debate on its validity in light of the pertinent provisions of the Constitution of 1987. Its formal signing last Tuesday was deferred by a temporary restraining older from the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments on the matter on Aug. 15.

This article is humbly offered for a better understanding of the agreement shorn of all its legal gobbledygook and presented in terms more familiar to the majority of our people who have not had the benefit of formal or even informal studies on the principles of our republican government.

A state is defined as a community of persons, more or less numerous, permanently occupying a fixed territory, and possessed of an independent government organized for political ends to which the great body of inhabitants render habitual obedience. Its essential elements are people, territory, government, and sovereignty.

The term people refers to the population of the state, which may be big like the 1.3 billion of China or small like the some 400,000 only of Iceland. They must come from both sexes to perpetuate the race. Theoretically, they must be numerous enough to be self-sufficient and defend themselves but not so many as to be difficult to govern and feed.

The territory is a fixed portion of the surface of the earth consisting of the land mass known as the terrestrial domain, the internal and external waters called the maritime and fluvial domain, and the air space above the land and the waters, or the aerial domain. The components of an archipelago are integrated into one complete unit instead of being fragmented into separate islands.

Government is the instrumentality through which the will of the state is formulated, expressed and realized. It may be democratic or dictatorial, monarchial or republican, and must have jurisdiction over the inhabitants of the state and the capacity to represent it in its relations with other states.

Sovereignty means independence of the state from external control in its relations with its people and other members of the family of nations. The majority view is that it is its recognition as such that makes the state an international person and entitles it to participate in the decisions and activities of the family of nations.

I would not call the lengthy document “just a piece of paper” that does not deserve much attention. Whether it is eventually sustained or rejected by the Supreme Court, it is to me an insult per se to the democratic nature of our government and evidence of the docility of its present leadership.

The Philippines is unquestionably a state, possessing all the essential elements of statehood, with our more than 83 million population, our archipelagic territory, our rather wobbly government that is disgraced as the most corrupt in Asia, and the independence we regained in 1946 from the United States, which actually still controls us.

The MILF is only a rebellious group that our government has not even expressly recognized as a belligerent community under international law. But we are dealing with it as if it were a full-fledged state with the capacity, among other powers, to enter into treaties. Worse, it wants us to accept the Bangsamoro as a separate state with full and expressed preference “in their favor” in case of conflict with the Philippine Republic.

I do not intend to discuss the agreement in detail, assuming I have the competence to do so, which I have not at this time. The Supreme Court will eventually do this, as usual in a kilometric ponencia, with accompanying concurring and dissenting opinions. I will just say for the nonce that it contains many shocking provisions, like the recognition of the Bangsamoros as the exclusive owners of their claimed homeland covering various parts of the national territory described in Article 1 of our Constitution.
There are other incredible concessions given by the Republic of the Philippines to the Bangsamoros, such as the right to exercise powers exclusively vested in what the agreement calls the Central Government. The intention, it would seem, is to compare their ancestral domain to a component in a federation, which we are not. Moreover, the members of a federation, like the states in the United States, cannot exercise powers belonging only to the federal government, like the conduct of foreign affairs.

It is strongly suspected that the controversial agreement President Macapagal-Arroyo is endorsing is part of her scheme to replace our present Republic with a federal government where she will remain in power as its president or prime minister. She expects to do this with the controlled electoral support of the “Bangsamoro People” and the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity with which she is willing to share her authority in the governance of what the agreement grandly calls the “First Nation.”

I hope the solicitor general will not again claim the executive privilege of the President to prevent a full disclosure of the motives of the questioned agreement, which its apologists are already arrogantly calling “a done deal.” To many anxious and anguished citizens like me, it is nothing less than a treaty of surrender that should make the Republic of the Philippines bow its head in sorrow and shame.