BY RYAN D. ROSAURO, PECOJON
MOA-AD: most significant advance in the 11-year peace negotiation
IN a rally in Marawi City attended by thousands of Maranaos demanding resumption of stalled peace talks in late 2006, a burly man in his mid-50s was ironically urging the mostly young crowd to “be prepared to fight to win back our homeland.”
“I have warned you before; this government is only toying with our aspiration for self-determination,” beamed the man whose two sons died as fighters in the Moro rebellion.
Peace negotiations hit a snag September 2006 over the issue of territory which is among the four strands in the ancestral domain agenda of the Malaysian-brokered exploratory talks between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
According to an MILF member who translated the thundering speech in Maranao for this writer, there has been a rebirth of extremist thinking in Lanao del Sur following the impasse that lasted for about a year.
Aga Khan Mangondato Sharief, chair of the ceasefire local monitoring team (LMT) in Lanao del Sur, said the Maranaos’ pulse as to what means can bring them closer to self-determination ranges from moderate to extreme, and public sentiment swings one way or the other depending on how they perceived the peace process turned out at each step.
Amid this atmosphere, which was like other Moro communities, the crafting of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was indeed a breakthrough.
Although it triggered widespread political uproar, which were fierce and fiery in some localities of the country, and ignited renewed hostilities, the MOA-AD remains the most significant achievement of the Mindanao peace process.
And while it was declared by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional “in its present form”, it embodies the boldest attempt so far to redraw the country’s socio-political landscape to substantively accommodate the interests of a minority people. Ironically, this was also the greatest source of peril for the entire peace process.
Closer to settlement
Although it was not self-executory, a signed MOA-AD could have pushed government and the MILF an edge closer to a negotiated political settlement.
According to former Mindanao State University Prof. Rudy Rodil, then vice-chair of the government peace panel, a signed MOA-AD brings the parties from exploratory to formal talks geared at crafting a comprehensive compact. This is the equivalent of the Final Peace Agreement of government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). It will expectedly embody the “totality of solutions” to the ‘Bangsamoro problem.’
The Tripoli Agreement on Peace, inked on June 22, 2001, spells out ancestral domain as the final third of three aspects that government and the MILF need to reach consensus on. Referred to as the “mother agreement,” it provides the framework of their negotiations. The two other aspects are security, which principally covers ceasefire, and relief and rehabilitation, which covers rebuilding of war-torn communities. Both are now operational based on agreed implementing guidelines.
The three aspects encapsulate the issues the parties identified as attendant to making Moro self-determination a reality.
Roots and identity
The consensus points on the ancestral domain agenda were generally geared at formally recognizing Bangsamoro identity and acknowledge their roots from a self-governing society. This is hoped to be the bedrock of correcting historical injustices against them as a people.
Primarily, the MOA-AD outlines the creation of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), an instrument for Moro self-governance; delineates the expanse of its administrative territory; and defines the framework and character for its governance.
Bangsamoro refers to the collective national identity of 13 ethno-linguistic tribes in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan bonded by their faith in Islam. This is an identity distinct from being Filipino owing to its historical underpinnings.
As a political entity, the Bangsamoro predates Philippine statehood, explained Rodil who is a historian and former journalist.
When the Treaty of Paris was executed by Spain and the United States, there were formally three states in existence: the Sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, and the Philippines, he pointed out.
The Sulu sultanate was established in 1450, around 70 years after the Islamic faith was introduced in the region; the Maguindanao sultanate arose in 1619, a little over a century after Islamization reached the Mindanao mainland. Philippine independence was declared 1898.
But the Moros and Filipinos shared a similar political fate with the victory of American forces in subsequent pacification campaigns, Rodil stressed.
Disfavored
The militarily dominant Americans co-opted and watered down the political strength of the traditional leaders. And with relatively effective control of the islands, they introduced the alien Torrens titling system covering the ownership of lands. They invalidated vested land rights granted by traditional leaders to give way to state-sanctioned ones.
According to Rodil, the major public land laws passed in 1903, 1919 and 1936 all disfavored the Moros and lopsidedly favored homesteaders who are primarily Christian migrants from Visayas and Luzon, and corporations.
These said policies pump-primed further migration into Mindanao that drove away the Moros and the indigenous peoples from their untitled land possessions.
Although their people reel from these incursions, the pragmatic Moro leaders issued the Zamboanga Declaration of 1924 asking the US government to declare Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan as unorganized territories, and for a referendum to be held 50 years later in order to determine the local peoples’ political future. The proposed arrangement resembles that of Guam, Puerto Rico, and Saipan which are American protectorate states.
The declaration was issued in light of the US colonial government’s phased plan to hand over sovereign rule of the islands to Filipinos, starting with the Commonwealth arrangement.
The Moro liberation movements considered the “annexation” of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan into Philippine territory through the 1935 charter and the eventual handover of these during the 1946 grant of independence by the US as immoral for lack of plebiscitary consent.
And the new sovereigns were not unlike the former overlords; the policies and structures of subjugation persisted. This is the root of the coinage Filipino colonialism.
Datu Michael Mastura, a lawyer and historian who is a senior member of the MILF peace panel, said the Moro people are only demanding to secure “what is left of us now” by asking the reversal of lopsided policies embodied in the state’s existing legal framework.
Philippine citizens
These historical tidbits should explain the pervading discomfort of Moro rebel leaders when discussions in the exploratory talks would refer to the Constitution.
“They are very sensitive to that word,” recalls Rodil who is among the veterans in peace negotiations with the Moro rebels. From 1992 to 1996, he was special consultant to the government panel in talks with the MNLF; vice-chair of the panel in talks with the MILF from 2004 until it was unceremoniously dissolved September 2008.
If they express acquiescence to the Constitution, the Moro rebels will be construed as bowing to the terms of colonial subjugation and reneging on their national identity.
Even then, they are Philippine citizens by legal reality, said Musib Buat, a Moro lawyer working for the MILF peace panel.