MANILA, Philippines—When the Supreme Court stopped the signing on Aug. 5 of the draft agreement seeking to establish an expanded Bangsamoro homeland, Mohagher Iqbal, chief negotiator of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, said that the last-minute cancellation made it clear to the international community that “the Philippine government does not possess the capability of entering into a peace conference.”

The abortion of the event became a diplomatic embarrassment as Ambassador Kristie Kenney of the United States, Ambassador Sayed Elm Masry of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, together with Ambassadors Makoto Katsura of Japan and Roderick Smith of Australia, had assembled in Kuala Lumpur to witness the signing.

As key stakeholders in the peace process in Mindanao, the presence of the diplomats signified the blessings of their respective countries to the agreement and implicit recognition of the pact. They were there to accord legitimacy to the agreement.

Iqbal’s remark may have told the truth of the political capacity of the Philippine government, but it also underscored the MILF’s contempt for constitutional processes, which the memorandum of agreement (MOA) on ancestral domain stayed by the high court’s temporary restraining order (TRO), gave short shrift as the defining framework of the proposed Bangsamoro homeland and, indeed, of the political settlement of the 40-year-old separatist war waged by the MILF.

Reflecting this contempt, the MILF’s vice chair for political affairs, Ghadzali Jaafar, maintained that the MOA was a “done deal” and had become binding after it was initialed by the government and MILF peace panels on July 27.

What is more insulting is his remark that the TRO was “purely an internal” problem of the government, implying that the MILF does not recognize whatever the court decides on the issues raised by local officials protesting the inclusion of their municipalities in the expanded Bangsamoro homeland.

Thus, the MILF has served notice that the court’s decision would not be binding to them.

The TRO reveals not only the political capacity of the government to enforce a peace package but also of the weakness of the executive department to bring into line countervailing departments—such as the judiciary and legislative—behind its diplomatic initiatives.

Dangerous mind-set

It is a reasonable assumption that the court was aware of these offensive remarks of MILF leaders and their implications for the system of checks and balances underpinning Philippine democracy. In issuing the TRO, the court was sending the message that this principle was not suspended by the MOA.

These remarks of the MILF rebels reveal a dangerous mind-set on the issues of the political capacity of the government to enter into binding agreements and of the primacy of the Constitution. They represent the land mines that the negotiations have to tread when the talks are resumed in Malaysia in the last two weeks of August.

These issues foreshadow that the MOA has set back the negotiations further away from a settlement than where they were before the MOA was initialed by the opposing panels. The revelation of the details of the MOA on the eve of scheduled signing after the government kept the agreement in secret for a long time is fortunate.

It revealed not only the antidemocratic mind-set of the MILF but also its contempt for and hostility to constitutional niceties. It provoked the timely intervention of the Supreme Court.

The intervention forced up the surface the hidden issues of the agreement. The petitions by the protesting parties against the agreement exposed it to scrutiny for its transparency.

Negotiated land grab

If the MOA had not been revealed in time, no one would have had the slightest idea that the area awarded by the memorandum to the expanded homeland represented the biggest negotiated land grab of national territory to a separatist group in the country’s history.

The MOA added 700 villages in the provinces of Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Norte, and North Cotabato, including parts of Palawan, to the area of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to make up the expanded Bangsamoro homeland.

The MOA pictured the mutilation of Mindanao areas in the redistribution of territories to expand the Bangsamoro homeland. The dismantling was done in such a way that it appalled local residents.

When the mayor of Iligan City unfolded to his constituents in an emergency meeting a map showing that eight out of the city’s 44 barangays would be absorbed by the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity, the city residents, who were never consulted about the partition, were shocked to learn that the 44 villages comprised 82 percent of the city’s territory.

The city erupted in protest. This illustrated the deceitful, let alone, the secretive way the redistribution was carried out.

Inflammatory issues

The unrest unleashed by the MOA over the territorial grab, the grant of sweeping powers that have the main elements of a sovereign state outside the compass of the Philippine Constitution has undermined the capacity of the Arroyo administration to deliver a peace pact.

Instead, the MOA has become a package of TNT, containing enough inflammatory issues that can easily ignite a new explosion in Mindanao. In its haste to conclude the pact, the administration has inherited a ticking time bomb.