Please allow me to thank Antonio Montalvan for the positive points he made in his July 23 column (“Federalism is a road to discord”). Some of his conclusions, however, were, to say the least, off-tangent.
He seems to have misinterpreted a number of our comments on the rationale for our consultative committee’s recommendations to revise the 1987 Constitution.
It is true that in 2018, I filed a resolution to adopt the federal system where I suggested that our republic should have 11 federal states. At that time, it did not include the Cordilleras. A few months later, in a forum in Baguio, vocal activists from the Cordilleras criticized that uninformed omission and convinced me that their region should be treated as one of the federal states in Luzon. Thus, the number of federal states that I subsequently proposed was increased to 12. But, now, the committee has recommended to the President the creation of 18, not 12, federal states.
Also, Montalvan’s allegation of what I said in a television interview that “North Mindanao State ‘may be divided’ into northwestern and northeastern” failed to capture the intent of my statement that the boundaries of the proposed federal states were subject to revision pursuant to the better judgment of the people concerned.
Indeed, I suggested that, if only to facilitate the discussion, for Mindanao we would limit our proposal to create only three federal states: Northern Mindanao, Southern Mindanao and the Bangsamoro.
Incidentally, I also mentioned in many forums on federalism that it is possible for the federal state of the Bangsamoro to have two autonomous regions: one for the Muslim-dominated provinces in mainland Mindanao, and the other for Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
He also bewailed my alleged statement “in a January 2017 forum [that] Masbate, currently counted as part of Bicol, would be included in Central Visayas.” Again, he does not seem to realize that I have, in fact, ceaselessly advocated in federalism forums that the choice of the people as to which federal state they wish to belong should as much as possible be respected.
May I respectfully stress that our work in the consultative committee was merely recommendatory. In plain language, the President, to whom our output was addressed, had full discretion to use only a part—or the whole or none—of the said recommendations as he wished.
In the performance of our work, the President never interfered. If Montalvan has evidence to the contrary, he should feel free to reveal it accordingly.
Lastly, may I express the wish that in discussing issues of national importance, we avoid name-calling or attributing ill motives to those engaged in the discussion.
His branding me, for instance, as an “oligarch” is so far from the truth.
AQUILINO PIMENTEL JR., member, consultative committee