BY RYAN D. ROSAURO, PECOJON
MOA-AD: breakthrough to war
EXPLORATORY talks on the “highly contentious” ancestral domain agenda kicked off April 2005 and lasted more than three years.
Maulana Alonto, a member of the MILF panel, recalled that the specific process for this agenda “started with a compromise: government to stop invoking its Constitution and the MILF to drop its independence bid.”
Alonto told delegates to the International Solidarity Conference on Mindanao last March that “perhaps the pervading environment of goodwill” during that time bode well for shaping “a negotiated political formula that is just and feasible.”
Former Mindanao State University (MSU) Prof. Rudy Rodil relates that this specific compromise allowed the panels to form consensus points beyond the strictures of the Constitution, which they all agreed was not really designed to accommodate the “legitimate aspirations of the Bangsamoro.”
“It took three months and 23 days to discuss the word FREEDOM, making sure that the provisions using such word should not sound like INDEPENDENCE,” added Rodil, vice-chair of the government panel that negotiated the MOA-AD.
This is why Rodil repeatedly stressed that “the Supreme Court speculated on the independence tendency of the MOA-AD.”
He described the language of the agreement: “It is constructive ambiguity; what is written is not necessarily understandable to the layman but it reflects or encapsulates the sense and substance of the negotiation with sensitivity to the feelings of the groups involved.”
President Arroyo herself reminded then Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi in a May 6, 2008 letter that “... the principle of self-determination for the Bangsamoro shall preclude any future interpretation to include independence, even as parallel strategies are explored on how these commitments can be fulfilled, either through the existing legal framework or under efforts to amend it…”
The discussion on territory was the longest, taking 14 months, with the MILF originally proposing to cover 3,978 barangays.
It was very ticklish that it was not discussed frontally; position papers have to be coursed through the Malaysian facilitator, Rodil said.
Using a mix of parameters, the two parties pared down the list into the final figure of 735 barangays. These would be added to the core homeland area comprising six Lanao del Norte towns that voted inclusion into the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in a 2001 plebiscite and the present ARMM.
One parameter is the historical geographic expanse of the sultanates using maps developed from studies on the subject. This explains the inclusion, among others, of villages in Iligan and Zamboanga cities.
Another parameter is the predominance of Moro population in a given village.
A “special intervention area” was identified and comprised 1,459 villages. These are primarily part of the historical geographic expanse of the sultanates but no longer have Moro dominated populations.
Unthinkable nod
Rodil emphasized that a plebiscite is to be held in these areas—within 12 months from MOA-AD signing for the 735 villages, and within 25 years for the 1,459 villages.
It will be to solicit the residents’ opinion whether they would like to be included in the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), the expanded self-governance territory.
“It was still unthinkable for me why the MILF agreed on a plebiscite, which is a Constitutional process, when it has consistently refused to use or refer to such word,” disclosed Rodil.
The MILF nod on the plebiscite provision hastened the process of finalizing the MOA-AD, he added.
“We have so many moments of darkness… The big step that we were looking for was having the MILF sign (the MOA-AD),” he recounted.
Rodil credited the high level of mutual trust among the respective panels for the hurdles over thorny issues.
Imperiled the process
These breakthroughs came to naught with the widespread political uproar that even went to the extent of re-igniting socio-cultural tensions and reliving latent biases.
The Moro struggle for respect of what remained of their ancestral homeland has been distinctly political. However, the issue splits Mindanao’s peoples, more so the Filipino nation, along religious lines; principally between Christians and Muslims.
But Rodil counseled that historically, “religion was just an accident to the division; it was more of colonialism, the Christian Spaniards, and later Americans, colonizing and the Moros resisting.”
Peace activist Gus Miclat said this posturing especially by people in Visayas and Luzon is a challenge at broadening the constituency for Mindanao peace. He said these biased views are largely born by lack of understanding of Mindanao’s social dynamics because of poor knowledge of its history.
This should be very important as the perceived juicy concessions government gave Moro rebels is always perceived as leading to dismemberment of the Republic, and hence high treason.
Unfortunately for the peace process, the constituency of people ‘blind’ about Mindanao is so huge that when they rose up against the MOA-AD, the widely unpopular President Arroyo was shaken.
The strong anti-Arroyo lobby was militating against charter change before 2010, which could have been an opportunity to carry out the necessary ‘Constitutional correction’ to accommodate the peace process consensus.
In a response uncharacteristic of decisive leadership, the Palace went to the extent of seemingly disowning participation in producing the fruit of a laborious process.
Rodil recalled a moment during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the MOA-AD when then Solicitor-General Agnes Devanadera told the magistrates the government panel had no authority to sign the proposed deal. “Why not ask the panel chair who was behind her that time?”
“There was nothing that we committed in Malaysia that did not pass through a battery of lawyers, not considered by the Palace,” Rodil stressed.