Hope amid perils

The latest word on the ongoing peace negotiations between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is that the Muslim rebels have rejected a proposal by the government peace panel to offer them a system it calls “genuine autonomy.” This the MILF views as substantially falling short of its demand for a “substate” in Mindanao. The government says agreeing to such a “substate,” even with the MILF’s assurance that the territory would remain an indisputable part of the Philippines, requires amending the Constitution. The rebels, on the other hand, insist that giving Filipino Muslims the autonomy to chart their own destiny is urgent and just, and would go a long way toward redressing the decades of neglect, exploitation and maltreatment the region and its minority Islamic populace have suffered under Manila-centric governments.

Despite this fundamental disagreement, the talks have not collapsed, and the new round of negotiations is in its early stages. There is reason to hope—however guarded at this point, given the peace talks’ tortured history—that the two panels might yet arrive at a more mutually agreeable place of discussion and compromise, eventually leading to an agreement that is fair and finally satisfactory to all parties concerned—the Filipino people ultimately.

If it’s any consolation to the peace negotiators, when it comes to exploring the details and implications of a proposed Bangsamoro “substate,” they aren’t exactly faced with a blank slate. There is, of course, an existing prototype: the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), created in 1990 to address precisely the same demands for greater self-governance and self-reliance among Filipino Muslims, without, however, leading to territorial secession from the Republic—the basic non-negotiable point. The ARMM’s headstart as a historic political experiment in governmental autonomy should be able to offer valuable lessons—and caveats—to the panels now looking at the possibility of creating a new entity along the same alley.

It’s imperative to ask, then: How has the ARMM been since its founding? It’s been two decades hence, and the once-fledgling region—which includes Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi—has had six elected governors. It has been the recipient of billions of pesos in aid from the national government, plus billions more from foreign-assisted projects by such international agencies as the United Nations Development Programme, USAID and AusAID. It has not been wanting, in short, in terms of assistance extended to it for its economic development and political progression into a viable, fully-functioning “substate”—for all intents and purposes—within Mindanao.

The real score, though, is grim. In the 2010 elections, the ARMM was said to have the highest number of private armed groups in the country—20, each with about 2,500 members. It also registered the highest number of election-related violence, from all its 118 towns and municipalities. All these years, four ARMM provinces—Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Basilan and Sulu—have been perennials in the Comelec’s list of election hotspots. And the biggest reported cases of “dagdag-bawas” have also led back to the region.

Apart from the ARMM becoming a warlord’s paradise, its provinces are among the country’s most desperate, economically backward places. It has the lowest literacy rates; the most number of maternal deaths, infant mortality and diseases; the poorest educational and general living standards, and so on.

Charges of corruption and plunder are rife. A year ago, the ARMM was reported to owe 26,000 teachers P124 million in salaries. The Commission on Audit would also find out that some P1 billion of ARMM funds had gone missing under the administration of its last elected governor, Zaldy Ampatuan, before the latter and members of his family were hauled off to prison for the Maguindanao massacre. That last incident was but the ghastly fruit of the vicious confluence of everything that had gone wrong in the ARMM: nepotism, unbridled power, lawlessness, incompetence, election fraud, the molly-coddling by a Malacañang that saw the region as a power base for vote-hoarding and influence-peddling.

The ARMM as it is today is a “failed experiment,” President Aquino has said. Its glaring failures now offer a roadmap of not only the perils and pitfalls, but also the better options, the government and its Muslim counterparts need to take heed of to make their mutual best case for the betterment of Mindanao.