Who are the enemies of peace?

If you are against the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), are you an enemy of peace? The question begs to be asked after President Aquino said during the Edsa People Power 1 anniversary that yes, one is.

It is a question that, however, begs for answers, and not as a method of public conditioning that Mr. Aquino wants it to be. The silver lining to the Mamasapano tragedy seems to be the heightened public awareness of the Mindanao peace process, fueled no less by a lying President. The open debate in social media may even continue well beyond 2016 when it will not be remote to see Mr. Aquino wheelchair-bound.

Because it is a politically charged issue, there appears to be a wide range of intentions that drive the multiplicity of opinions. Where are these opinions coming from? The chaff must be sifted from the grain.

For instance, a hundred years have passed but the colonial residue of mistrust and hatred against the Moro by many non-Moro Filipinos still remains. Here the viewpoints range from the most gullible to the most unreasonable—e.g., Mindanao will become a part of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria once the Bangsamoro substate comes into being, without any semblance of study on what propels Islamic fundamentalism in other countries. Philippine Moro society has had no tradition and tolerance for radical Islamic clerics.

A very common misconception about the BBL is that it prescribes for the “dismemberment of the republic.” It is easy to see that those advancing this idea have not read the law itself, particularly Article III on Territory: “The Bangsamoro territory shall remain a part of the Philippines.” All arguments to the contrary must end there.

Some get carried away by political theoretical jargons such as “self-determination” and “self-governance,” and equate these terms with dismemberment. These terms are compatible with another jargon, that of subsidiarity. In fact,

subsidiarity is a social organization concept that evolved from the Roman Catholic Church. It is identical to decentralization. It holds that social problems should be addressed at the local level because that is the level that knows the context of the solution. In political theory, it is often identified with federalism. The concept of the European Union and its individual member states is most akin to subsidiarity. Dismemberment is nowhere related to these principles.

The Bangsamoro will not even have its own army. Its army will be the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which may organize a Bangsamoro command. The Bangsamoro police will be part of the Philippine National Police. In Article IV, the proposed BBL “renounces war as an instrument of national policy.” It is not fair to oppose the BBL from a position of ignorance.

Certainly, however, there are voices of dissent that operate from legitimate constructs. After the Mamasapano incident, those who cast “serious doubts on the sincerity of the MILF” stand on valid grounds. It should not hurt the Moro Islamic Liberation Front a bit if it addresses these doubts. For starters, one must admire the statesmanship and tact of its chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal. If he is the face of the MILF, sincerity should not be difficult to demonstrate.

To be sure, there are sections in the BBL that call for clarifications. It is nebulous, for instance, on what to do with traditional Moro aristocracy. To simply abolish it would constitute a break from its “symbolic claims to continuity with past anti-colonial struggles.” That would also confirm the often misplaced view of the non-Moro people that the datu system was the “single cause of Muslim underdevelopment,” however mono-causal that argument sounds.

There are other cultural gray areas. The very prevalent social problem of bearing arms that anthropologists have identified as a form of status fetishism motivated by status pride begs to be asked. This is also a source of war where often the MILF and the Army act as proxies. One Moro informer said that is a peculiar problem that precisely will be addressed by the Bangsamoro police. But that remains to be seen.

The BBL states that “A free and open regional party system shall be allowed to evolve according to the free choice of the people.” Yet I do not see a system shielded from Manila’s traditional politics. In the past, the preference for political leaders from the Moro elite created political monsters in the mold of those that Manila produced, to the detriment of the Moro masses. That was indeed a cause of Moro underdevelopment. That will be a tricky proposition.

To go back to the question: If you are against the Bangsamoro Basic Law, are you an enemy of peace? If we go by history, the passage of the law must never be hinged on political capital. Manila has played long enough with Mindanao. In 1977, because of divergent interpretations, Ferdinand Marcos proceeded to “implement” the Tripoli Agreement on his own terms. His sincerity was deemed doubtful, to say the least. Now,

Mr. Aquino wants to have the BBL railroaded while a nation is still asking for clarifications, to say the least. Like Marcos, that is not a position of sincerity.

A tried and tested barometer for Mindanao peace is Fr. Eliseo Mercado, OMI, of Cotabato. This is what he says in his social media post: “We really are not learning from history… thus we are condemned to repeat it!”

Who are the enemies of peace? That should not be hard to answer.