The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) says the Philippine government has already entered into a memorandum of agreement with it. What the government said was supposed to take place on Aug. 5 but which the MILF announced on Monday would take place on Aug. 25, is merely a “symbolic signing.”

Mohagher Iqbal, the MILF’s chief peace negotiator, claims that he and Rodolfo Garcia, the government’s chief peace negotiator, and Presidential Peace Adviser Hermogenes Esperon, signed the agreement, with the Malaysian government’s Datuk Othman bin Abdulrazak as witness, on July 16. This, in turn, does not match President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s assertion, made in her State of the Nation Address, that the thorny question of ancestral domain was settled only on the night before she delivered her speech on July 26.

Fr. Eliseo Mercado, recipient of the Aurora Aragon Quezon Peace Award, describes the memorandum of agreement with the MILF as representing a “new paradigm” that could go a long way toward a just settlement of Moro grievances. That new paradigm he calls “earned sovereignty,” in which a three step process unfolds. It involves first, shared sovereignty between our republic and a sub-State, the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity. Next, institution-building, in which the BJE establishes self-governing institutions. And finally, a final settlement of the political status of the BJE, by means of a referendum conducted under international or United Nations auspices.

Mercado, however, has pointed out that the present agreement’s “paramount flaw is the absence or utter lack of consultation of stakeholders, including Christian leaders, indigenous peoples in Mindanao, and peace advocates, themselves.” He says “this flaw contravenes the very essence of any peace process which is participative of the stakeholders. The participative aspect of any process cannot be overemphasized since this should lead to a regional and national consensus on the peace formula.”

Mercado’s fears have already been demonstrated by potentially affected areas in Mindanao erupting in protest over what they perceive to be a diktat from Manila.

One example will suffice. In Iligan City, to which the President claims sentimental ties, an emergency meeting upon the behest of the mayor took place last Friday. The mayor apparently laid out the provisions of the agreements before an increasingly shocked gathering, noting that 8 out of the city’s 44 “barangay” [neighborhood districts] could conceivably end up in the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity. That constitutes, according to residents, 82 percent of the city’s territory. The city erupted in protest.

It is significant that the mayor could lay out provisions of the agreement to concerned constituents while the executive department told the Supreme Court that the agreement is covered by executive privilege. The Court itself was placed in the comical position of formally demanding access to the agreement in the name of officials opposed to the agreement, even though at least some other local officials had knowledge of its provisions. Not to mention facsimiles but also the full text of the actual draft memorandum of agreement have been published on line in Inquirer.net and subsequent revisions to it reported as well.

The President, in truth, has not gone beyond the meager few lines in her address to the nation, in which she disclosed the impending agreement almost as a footnote. When both Christian and Muslim Filipinos asked her to disclose the proposed agreement and elaborate on the principles and policies, not to mention negotiations that led to it, the official reaction, beginning immediately after the President’s speech, has been to obfuscate, sidestep, delay and refuse to disclose.

Information has dribbled out, but none of it categorically endorsed by the administration. Who can blame Christian and Muslim residents in Mindanao for fearing that the President’s lack of candor is a sign of bad faith on her part? Whether egged on, as some argue, by politicians nervous over Muslims finally being on the threshold to achieving genuine equality, or by perpetually divided Muslim Filipinos who are not under the ambit of the MILF, she has ignored the cardinal principle of politics, which is to create a constituency to support a policy.