Negotiating in bad faith

 

 

In his novel, The Dogs of War (1974), Frederick Forsyth wrote about a group of mercenary soldiers hired to depose a fictional government in Africa. Forsyth called this group the dogs of war, much like the wild pack of soldiers Shakespeare referred to in his play, Julius Caesar.

 

But when the Philippine military named the two dogs and a cat they took into custody during the recent arrest of two high-ranking members of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as “Ben,” “Wilma” and “Joma,” obviously after the top leaders of the Communist movement, it was a cheap shot, an unfair and malicious attack against their prized captives. On other hand, Forsyth’s dogs of war could probably aptly describe the military like a wild bunch unleashed to pounce on their hated adversaries.

Top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Benito Tiamzon and his
wife Wilma Austria raise their fists in defiance on their way to their hastily
arranged inquest in Manila after being arrested in Cebu last March 22.

The military also mockingly announced that the well-groomed pets owned by the captured Communist leaders, Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria, were better fed than the soldiers in the army whose monthly combat salary wasn’t even sufficient to pay for the pets’ food. Perhaps, the military was sending a hidden message to let the government hear that they are not being taken cared of unlike the Tiamzons’ pets.

 

We can excuse Forsyth in describing his villains as dogs of war since he was only writing a fictional tale. On the other hand, the military had no valid excuse to be insensitive and thoughtless in naming their hostages after their owners. The military’s insensitivity is not just to their prisoners, but to dogs and cats in general, who also have feelings and in fact are more sensitive than people realize.

 

Dogs are very sensitive souls, and if only they could communicate like human beings, they could have let those soldiers know how they felt. Not because they were named after their owners, but it’s just that naming pets is not something to treat like a joke, especially one that is made in poor taste.

 

No species has developed a closer relationship with humanity than the dog, or the cat. We name our pets when we’re prepared to adopt them, to bring them to our homes to become part of our families like our own children. Not to name them in order to poke fun at their owners. These soldiers do not understand what it is about dogs that allows them to live at ease with people.

 

Not so many people really know who the Tiamzons are in person. Just because they were Communists and have lived in the shadows for almost four decades, many who believe the alternative to Communism is far superior think it is perfectly all right to treat the Tiamzons like animals, or even worse than criminals. But it is their affection for dogs and cats that separates them from most of the worst among us who cannot appreciate that such animals also have feelings and rights like people.

 

It is this cavalier attitude of the military and the government that makes the so-called peace negotiations with the rebels really a joke, a process that is wrought from the start with insincerity and lack of genuineness of purpose in achieving the goal of lasting peace. It makes the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) issued by the government to the rebel participants an ineffectual document of safe passage. Because the government believes they unilaterally impose the JASIG guarantees, that at any time the government wishes to suspend the JASIG’s effect, they can always round up and detain the rebel leaders.

 

Before the capture of Benny Tiamzon and Wilma Austria, other consultants of the CPP and the National Democratic Front (NDF) were also snatched by the military on the pretext that the JASIG has lost its effect because of the impasse in the negotiations.

 

Yet the JASIG guarantees were the product of an agreement, therefore, they can be suspended only if both parties also agreed to do so. But not in the present case. It was only the government who decided on its own irrespective of the other party that the JASIG guarantees are no longer operative since the negotiations were stalled.

 

According to Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, former head of the government peace panel, Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria should be released if they were carrying genuine immunity papers during their arrest. Duterte added that the government should honour its commitment under the JASIG.

 

Under the JASIG, all rebels duly accredited as participants in the negotiations either directly or as consultants are guaranteed free and unhindered passage in all areas in the Philippines. JASIG’s protection covers immunity from surveillance, harassment, search, arrest, detention, prosecution and interrogations or any other similar punitive actions due to involvement or participation in the peace negotiations.

 

JASIG’s immunity is considered necessary in facilitating the peace negotiations between the government and the rebel group because it helps create and sustain an environment conducive to peace talks. It also attracted the Royal Norwegian Government to act as facilitator because of the JASIG guarantees. JASIG further enhances political stability in the Philippines and the government’s peaceful approach towards local insurgency, and this process is made known to the global community.

 

But when the Philippine government asserts that the JASIG guarantees are suspended due to the impasse in the negotiations, it was making a unilateral decision that has not been agreed by the parties. Besides, the process was never concluded nor deemed terminated. It must also be considered that the JASIG guarantees were the most contentious and toughest to negotiate because they covered essentially the procedural agreements between the parties before they could really commence the negotiations. To say, then, that JASIG has been suspended is in bad faith and without the agreement of the other party.

The arrest of Tiamzon and Austria and the other NDF consultants before them despite their JASIG accreditation, however, signals a clear indication that repression of the 45-year old insurgency continues and it is going on with impunity.

 

Recently, the Philippine Supreme Court has ordered the trial with dispatch of the trumped-up murder charges against former Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo and CPP-NDF consultants in the peace negotiations Randall Echanis, Rafael Baylosis and Vicente Ladlad in connection with the mass graves discovered in Leyte eight years ago. The mass graves discovered by the Philippine Army were said to contain the remains of individuals believed to be victims of “Operation Venereal Disease” launched by the CPP-NDF’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), to purge their ranks of suspected military informers and collaborators which happened 23 years ago.

 

Also early this week, the Philippine military reported the mass surrender of NPA supporters from Cagayan de Oro City to the army’s 14th Infantry Division, said surrenderees included civilians and children. Using a hoax surrender by the NPA is a patented pys-war tactic by the Philippine military to flush out other insurgents from their mass base and one of the biggest sources of corruption for AFP field commanders in pocketing the reward money from the government’s Social Integration Program for firearms surrendered.

 

Now the government panel is announcing plans to resume the peace negotiations with the Communist rebel group, but insisting that they are willing to negotiate only with CPP leaders based in the Philippines, and not with their counterparts in Utrecht in Netherlands.

 

Where is good faith and trust in the negotiations when at the same time the government is rounding up and detaining the rebel forces? Immunity from arrest was the purpose for installing the JASIG guarantees in the first place but the government apparently respects the agreement only when it works to their advantage.

 

Obviously the government treats the Muslim rebel forces under the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) quite differently from the CPP-NDF and other Muslim factions. The pivotal role of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in facilitating the negotiations between the government and the MILF has been hailed and credited with the adoption of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).

 

It should be recalled that the father of the current Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Haji Abdul Razak bin Haji Dato’ Hussein, was also Malaysia’s prime minister from 1970 to 1976. It was also common knowledge during that time that he supported the Muslim insurgency under the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) by providing the rebels with arms, training and funds. The support of the former Malaysian PM was conditional on the Muslim insurgents preventing the government in Manila from pursuing its Sabah claim.

 

With the change in the leadership of the Muslim insurgency, the current Malaysian Prime Minister shifted his support to the MILF and he became the chief facilitator of the Bangsamoro framework agreement.

 

Would the motive for the current Malaysian Prime Minister’s involvement in bringing the Philippine government and the MILF to the table be the same as his father’s?

 

In both peace negotiations by the government with the MILF and the CPP-NDF, it is crystal clear that the government is hiding its true intentions. Acquiescing to the integrity of Malaysia’s territorial right over Sabah and using JASIG as a pretext for rounding up Communist rebels are now surfacing as the real motivation for the government and not the genuine pursuit for lasting peace.

 

Perhaps, the current government can learn something from dogs and their sensitivity to social cues from people that enables them to fit with human society. Humans often fail to realize the unusual skills of dogs in communicating with their masters. But it’s not just their skills but their sense of loyalty which counts most. That is why dogs are our most trusted friends. Dogs know how to build and foster trust, which seems sorely lacking among humans. If only the military and the government could treat dogs in a better light.

Southern discomfort

 

 

Last October 15, 2012, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak were all smiles as they posed for posterity with members of the peace panels for the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who had just signed their framework agreement for peace. Hopes were high that finally peace would be within reach after so many years of fighting with the adoption of an historic agreement laying the framework for a new Muslim autonomous region to be called Bangsamoro.

President Benigno Aquino III does his "noynoying" on the recent Sabah
standoff. Photo courtesy of The Tribune Editorial cartoon. Click link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32WKHztMo04 to view President
Aquino's Press Conference  on the Sabah Issue.

President Aquino was relying on the Bangsamoro framework agreement as the lasting legacy of his presidency, a grand peace initiative that has eluded his predecessors. A major achievement, more significant probably than anything else like his symbolic campaign against corruption. Likewise, Malaysian PM Razak was optimistic that his high-profile role as broker for peace would clinch his re-election in the coming Malaysian elections. It was friendship and cooperation, both symbolic and statesman-like, between the two leaders that would have cast them as rising leaders of the Southeast Asian nations.

 

Everything was going according to plan until the Sabah standoff. Who would have thought the old claim of the Sultan of Sulu over Sabah was like a posterior itch that wouldn’t go away? What about the Malaysian PM’s brokering for peace, was he really sincere in bringing the warring parties to an agreement or simply taking advantage of the opportunity to score points for his re-election? And how about the unmasking of President Aquino’s lack of leadership during the crisis and his inability to protect his own people?

 

Even if the Malaysian military is able to comb out all the supporters of the Sultan of Sulu in Sabah, all dead rather than alive by their preference, this will still be a great debacle for the Malaysian PM that could cost him his re-election. President Aquino, for his initial subservient position to Malaysia’s stand and rebuke of the Sultan’s armed incursion into our neighbour’s backyard, would always be painted by many as the one president who gave up his own people to the wolves. No matter how one looks at this crisis, both leaders would find it very difficult to escape the wrath of their respective citizens.

 

Malaysia is reported to be deporting close to 800,000 Filipinos from Sabah, all Muslims and former residents of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi who have originally escaped from the internecine war between the Philippine military and Muslim insurgents in Mindanao. Most of these Filipinos now possess citizenship cards which were granted by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammad Mahathir in an alleged effort to secure political domination of the state by using immigrant votes.

 

A royal commission was established by the Malaysian federal government to investigate illegal immigration in Sabah which could have accounted for the surge in its population. The recent military confrontation between Malaysia and the Sultan of Sulu’s army may hamper this investigation or facilitate the deportation of Filipino Muslims from Sabah as they now appear to be returning to Sulu and Tawi-Tawi by the hundreds daily. This could also seriously spoil the re-election of the current Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak as he faces strong criticism for his government’s handling of the Sabah stand-off and the manner of exodus of Muslim Filipinos.

 

President Benigno Aquino III might be the biggest loser from this Sabah bloodbath. His hands have been tied by his friendship with the Malaysian PM for helping the Philippine government broker a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Aquino’s initial pronouncements on the Sabah conflict were all carefully crafted to support the actions of the Malaysian government against the Sultan of Sulu’s army. Even as the sultan’s soldiers were getting annihilated, all Aquino could muster to do was berate the sultan like a child and order him to withdraw his troops. Aquino even threatened to extradite the sultan to Malaysia with whom the Philippines does not have an extradition treaty. Instead of resorting to diplomacy in order to negotiate a ceasefire and possibly a face-saving pull-out of the sultan’s army, Aquino opted to let Malaysia handle the situation unilaterally even if it meant killing all the sultan’s soldiers.

 

Allowing your own people to get massacred, is this the kind of statesmanship expected of a president? Especially, when your people are up in arms in order to redress an arguably legitimate grievance.

 

Nobody expected President Aquino to embrace the sultan’s war, but when the situation has deteriorated to a crisis of humanitarian proportions, the better angels of our human nature dictate that we summon everything possible to save lives. We rally to the side of humanity, for saving lives is more important than any military victory at the expense of loss of human lives. We don’t keep denigrating the sultan’s decision to send his army however senseless it was when our Muslim brothers are getting killed. Or we don’t write opinion columns like Conrado de Quiros who keeps on describing the sultan’s military misadventure as idiotic, foolish and an utter waste. De Quiros continues to call the sultan’s incursion in Sabah as tragic and farcical in order to absolve President Aquino of any culpability for not doing anything during the crisis.

 

The Sultan of Sulu had always been victimized by a history of deception and trickery by colonial powers. In July 1878, Spain entered into a Treaty of Peace with the sultan which allowed them to set up a small garrison in the town of Jolo. Under the said treaty, the sultan would retain his rule outside the walls of the Spanish garrison. But that kind of protectorate relationship would be exploited by Spain in ceding the Philippine Islands to the United States in the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which included the Sulu islands and territories in Mindanao which had never been in full Spanish control. The sultan thought that the agreement with the Spaniards was similar to the one he signed six months earlier with the British North Borneo Chartered Company, which paid him $5,000 annually for the use of his North Borneo territories (now Sabah). This is now the same lease agreement being invoked by the present Sultan of Sulu in reviving its claim over Sabah.

 

Students from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City rally
for peace in Sabah, Borneo. Photo Aaron Favila/AP.

After their defeat by the U.S., the Spaniards turned over a garrison on the island of Siasi, southwest of Jolo, to the sultan. It was not until May 1899 that the U.S. troops took over the Spanish fort in Jolo. The Americans had not been able to get troops to Jolo sooner because they could not afford to send any troops outside of Luzon where they had been locked in a fierce battle with Filipino insurgents.

 

When the Americans arrived in Jolo, they told Jamalul Kiram II, the sultan of Sulu, that the U.S. had taken over the islands from Spain. They asked the sultan to recognize the U.S. and honour the 1878 provisions of the treaty which the sultan had signed with Spain. But the sultan refused, stating that the U.S. was a different entity and that the U.S. should enter into a new treaty with the Sultanate.

 

So the Americans negotiated the Bates Treaty of 1899 with the Sultan of Sulu, which turned out to be a classic example of American deception and how to use treaties in disingenuous ways. The Bates Treaty granted some degree of autonomy and protection to the Sulu Sultanate, effectively keeping them out of the Philippine-American War which was peaking in Luzon at that time. But once that war had ended, the terms of the Bates Treaty were broken which the United States considered an impediment to their colonial administration. American troops moved to bring the Moro territories under American military control, leading to the Moro War which would last for thirteen years, making it the longest war in U.S. history.

 

It was the wording relating to American sovereignty in the Bates Treaty and a critical error in its translation that the U.S. capitalized on in incorporating the Sulu archipelago into the new Philippine republic in 1946 when it granted independence to the Philippines. Thus, the Bates Treaty was in effect the first step towards the dissolution of Muslim sovereignty and the dismantling of the Sulu Sultanate.

 

History seems to repeat itself with the present Philippine government under President Aquino doing a Bates Treaty déjà vu. In entering into a peace agreement with the MILF for a new Bangsamoro nation, the government is effectively bringing the Sulu Sultanate to a final closure. The proposed Bangsamoro substate will be the new Muslim domain, all the lands to be incorporated in this new territory will all be subject to the Bangsamoro government; the Sulu Sultanate and all the lands under its former realm will be part of this new substate, thus reducing the southern Muslim kingdom to a mere historical footnote.

 

Maybe this is the primary reason behind the sultan’s military foray in Sabah, to let President Aquino and the rest of the Muslim world in the South know that the Sulu Sultanate will not allow any new government such as the proposed Bangsamoro to simply ignore them as if they never existed. History is on the side of the Sultanate of Sulu which has antedated even the Republic of the Philippines, or its colonial governments under Spain and the United States. If this is the case, then President Aquino has dug a very deep hole. The government’s peace accord with the MILF is in serious trouble, and the peace-building initiative in Mindanao that has proved so elusive in the past will have suffered yet another major setback.

Betraying Sabah

 

 

In possibly his last redemptive hour, the beleaguered dictator Ferdinand Marcos ordered the military to disperse without shooting the millions of people that gathered on EDSA in those two fateful days of the People Power Revolution. With his raspy voice almost inaudible, the dictator’s order was captured on television while giving his instructions to General Fabian Ver, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

 

The Malaysian military conducts house-to-house search in Sabah for the Sultan of
Sulu's men as the sultan (Sultan  of Sulu Jamalul Kiram III, foreground) declared
unilateral ceasefire. Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdvnfrkIWM4 to
view "Malaysia raids Sabah village to end stand-off."

Imagine if the soldiers had instead fired at the huge throng of demonstrators. Or the tanks deployed by the army unleashed their artillery toward the unarmed mass of protesters. Or the helicopters hovering above fired their guns on the people assembled in front of Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo. No doubt, that could have been the mother of all carnage.

 

If that tragic ending happened, would Conrado de Quiros of the Philippine Daily Inquirer be writing there was “fringe” painted all over those “revolucionarios” just like the way he described the Lapiang Malaya Massacre of 1967 and the current Sabah shootout between the Sultan of Sulu’s army and the Malaysian military?

Unarmed, some with their families and children in tow, the demonstrators in EDSA were virtually exposed to harm’s way. It would have been so easy for De Quiros to call the EDSA uprising a tragic farce if it ended tragically. But as history unfolded, the EDSA revolt had the sweetest ending one would have ever imagined, a victorious unarmed people’s uprising against a heavily geared-up Armed Forces of the Philippines. No bloodshed, no casualty, no accounts of anyone wounded, except for sunburn, hundreds of thousands of hoarse throats, and swollen toes from pounding the EDSA concrete.

 

In 1967, Valentin delos Santos and his 380 Lapiang Malaya followers, armed with bolos and wearing amulets which they believed would protect them from harm, charged at the Malacanang gates to overthrow the government of Ferdinand Marcos. A phalanx of policemen and members of the Philippine Constabulary stopped them with gunfire from their M-16s. The carnage ended with 33 dead and 47 wounded, all members of Lapiang Malaya. Their leader Valentin delos Santos was sent to the National Center for Mental Health instead of prison.

 

De Quiros wrote that the recent foray of the Sultan’s army in Sabah was no different from the Lapiang Malaya assault of Malacanang in 1967. Both tragic and farcical, he said in his column. For good measure, De Quiros should have added the Katipunan’s launching of the Philippine Revolution against Spain in Pugad Lawin in 1896. Similarly armed only with bolos and their brave hearts, the Katipuneros must also be out of their wits that they could defeat the Spanish military with what they had.

 

Or perhaps, the adventurous Argentine forces that invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands on April 2, 1982, which prompted the British government to dispatch their navy to engage the Argentines and retake the islands. The Falkland Wars lasted 74 days and ended with the surrender of the Argentine forces, which returned the islands to British control. Did the Argentines act in desperation, madly thinking they could match the naval superiority of the British?

 

Why does Hamas keep on firing missiles from the Gaza Strip to Israel knowing that would only raise the ire of the powerful Israeli army which is always prepared to launch a counteroffensive and invasion of Hamas territory? Or why on earth do Palestinians and Israelis continue to engage in an internecine war without victory for either of them or lasting peace in sight for the region?

 

Writing about the Prussian campaigns of 1793 and 1794, Carl von Clausewitz had recognized war as a political phenomenon, fought for a purpose that was political, or at least always had political consequences. The recent Sabah incursion, the 60’s Lapiang Malaya assault, the invasion of the Falkland Islands and the continuing Hamas incursions on Israeli territory are not motivated by sheer madness or led by people who were simply on the fringe as De Quiros would conveniently suggest. No matter how commentators conclude their observations after the fact, the one thing that always stands out is the political nature or consequences of these military adventures, successful or not.

 

The Lapiang Malaya massacre, for instance, brought out the brutality of disproportionate response to an attack that was doomed to fail in the first instance. Why use the heavy arsenal of lethal weapons against knife-wielding attackers when they could have been dispersed by water cannons?

 

Lapiang Malaya consisted mainly of poor peasants who were disillusioned with their perceived oppression by the government and the continuing evil influence of Western powers. When their demand that Ferdinand Marcos step down was rejected, they took the matter into their hands and launched a frenzied siege of Malacanang. Nuts, yes, but the government’s response was beyond insane and inhumane.

 

Now that the Sultan of Sulu has declared a ceasefire, although unilaterally while the United Nations has also called for peace talks instead of continued violence, the arduous task begins in deconstructing the Sultan’s frame of mind and why he went bonkers, as many would like to suggest, such as De Quiros for example. Surely the Sultan knew that his supposed invasion of Sabah will not succeed, at least in the strict military sense. But why would he sacrifice the lives of his few good men? This is what De Quiros cannot fathom, thus he dismissed the military incursion as a farcical and insane adventure. De Quiros even suggested that the Sultan’s unwise decision to dispatch his army would have the lingering effect of jeopardizing the government’s initiative to forge peace with our Muslim brothers in the South. Perhaps, even rob President Benigno Aquino III of the glitter and international admiration of a possible Nobel Peace Prize, according to De Quiros.

 

The Sultan’s military misadventure obviously has a political purpose, if not at least the political consequence of disrupting the government’s implementation of the last piece of the peace plan with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

 

Political, in two ways. One, the revival of a moribund claim to an ancestral land that had been relegated to the backburner by every Filipino president after Diosdado Macapagal, the only president who supported the Philippines’ claim over Sabah. There is both historical argument and documentary evidence that support this claim, except that the government has not pursued it either through negotiations with Malaysia or the formal filing of a claim with the international court. Consider too that the Malaysian government continues to make lease payments to the Sultan of Sulu, which my old friend and university classmate, Al Tillah, governor of Tawi-tawi, has confirmed. Although the amount paid to the Sultan every year is very minimal by today’s standards, what this means as a contractual obligation says a lot.

Map showing Sabah and the Philippines. The Sultan of Sulu's army landed in
Lahad Datu, an hour away by boat from the Sulu Archipelago.

President Aquino was caught flatfooted by the Sultan’s decision to resuscitate his family’s claim over Sabah, overreacting and even condemning the Sultan for sending his army to launch an alleged invasion. But anybody in the Sultan’s shoes would understandably be enraged with the government’s inaction, which implied the acceptance of the forgone conclusion that the Sabah claim is all dead and moot. If the Sultan was driven to commit lunacy, he could be forgiven because the present government is also largely at fault for doing nothing: for abandoning the Sabah claim which arguably could have been legitimate, until reversed by an international court, and for leaving the Sultan’s people in harm’s way and feeding them to the wolves instead of seeking a diplomatic solution. What else is new anyway with a president known for doing nothing?

 

Take a simple hostage-taking as a comparable scenario. What would the police or government do as its first response? Send in a negotiator to calm down the situation. Instead, President Aquino berated the Sultan like a child and let the Sultan’s army be annihilated by Malaysia’s military. President Aquino forgot that he was also endangering the lives of about 800,000 Filipinos in Sabah—Muslim Filipinos all of whom have escaped the on and off war between the Philippine army and Muslim secessionists which he now wanted to end through peaceful negotiations with the MILF. Forget about the Sultan’s claim over Sabah in the meantime. There is a peaceful mechanism to resolve this issue. But the situation in Sabah has deteriorated into a humanitarian crisis, a foolish war (as De Quiros is wont to call) between a heavily armed Malaysian army against a ragtag group of foot soldiers from Sulu. President Aquino should have been advised by sober minds on how to defuse the conflict.

 

The second political purpose or consequence of the Sultan’s foray in Sabah has to do with the present government’s cavalier attitude in forging a lasting solution to the Mindanao crisis. To the government, the only side that matters on the table is the MILF and the rest of the world is just a bunch of kibitzers. President Aquino’s peace panel ignored the Sultan and his historical grievance against Malaysia, the much-weakened but still alive Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the splinter group of rebel Muslims under the banner of Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), or even members of Congress and other civil society organizations who may have a stake in the peace process. There was no transparency in the government’s initiative to agree with one Muslim faction to the exclusion of others for a new Bangsamoro nation, a distinct geographical area carved out of the country’s territory and subsumed in a relationship of sovereignty association with the central government. And why has the government-friendly MILF been so quiet when their brother Muslims were being slaughtered in Sabah?

 

This latest Sabah episode only reveals the delicate cracks in the peace process that the present Philippine government has tried to sell to Muslim Filipinos in the South. By snubbing some Muslim groups which also have a huge stake in the peace negotiations, the Philippine government is resorting to the same deceptive schemes previously imposed by the Spanish, the American and British colonial powers on the Sultan of Sulu and his heirs to trick them in betraying their ancestral domain.

 

Since time immemorial, no foreign government, including our own Philippine government, has been fully honest in its dealing with the Sultan of Sulu, or for that matter with the whole Muslim population in the South. Is it any wonder then why the Muslims of Mindanao have always pined for their own free Bangsamoro, a nation separate and apart from the central government in Manila?

Fear of the Bangsamoro state

 

 

Today there is a far less rigid understanding of the meaning of independence than was the case during most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The growing perception is that flexibility is needed with respect to the status of some territories that do not desire or cannot sustain full independence but are not “dependent” territories.

 

The Compact of Free Association is a case in point. Three small nations that used to be part of the U.S.-administered U.N. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands – the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau, entered into the so-called Compact of Free Association which terminated their status as wards of the international community in 1986 and gave them a new status of free association with the United States. These new freely associated states retain their sovereign right of self-determination but have assigned their security and defence and the conduct of foreign affairs to the United States, the latter being the larger partner.

 

This concept of sovereignty association has also been tried by the independence movement in Quebec but the separatists lost in the 1995 referendum by a close vote. There are also those who view the European Union from its beginnings as the European Coal and Steel Community as a complex sovereignty association of a special nature. More than a century earlier, a number of tiny European fragments left over from the pre-Napoleonic period – San Marino, Liechtenstein, Andorra and Monaco – were recognized as technically independent by the Concert of Europe.

Bangsamoro rebels of Mindanao, Philippines. Click link to view "Bangsamoro
Mujaheedin," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRvlZET-vE4&feature=related

Thus, those who fear that the formation of the Bangsamoro nation could lead to separation might be out of touch with history. It is almost inevitable that a population with a very distinct cultural and religious ancestry will always pine for freedom to self-governance, if not alone, through an association with the larger or central power that is willing to devolve some form of autonomy to this new entity. To achieve this type of autonomy would require a military uprising which has been the status quo ante before the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) recently negotiated a Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro that defines the sharing of political and economic powers.

 

But this Framework Agreement is not a perfect document. It is wrought with inherent risks. If it is a roadmap to peace as the government panel sees it, then there are too many roadblocks ahead, some of which might seem insurmountable, either by legislation or pragmatic politics.

 

Splinter groups within the Islamic liberation movement like the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) have already vowed to continue their armed struggle for self-determination as a separate state. Even the old Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) under Nur Misuari has charged that the Framework Agreement was illegal because of the existing peace accord between the government and MNLF.

 

The indigenous peoples such as the Lumads, and the predominantly Roman Catholic communities in the new Bangsamoro state may not totally support the new entity because of fear of being subjected to the Sharia justice system, and naturally for their displacement and loss of property. Although the Framework Agreement makes it clear that only Muslims will be under Sharia jurisdiction.

 

Another relevant question is how this agreement achieved by the MILF will affect the other peace negotiations between the government and the communist insurgency group represented by the National Democratic Front (NDF). The negotiations have reached an impasse with the government being apparently disinterested to continue. But should there be a peace agreement with the NDF-led communist group, is it going to be similar with the MILF Bangsamoro deal? This might further heighten the fear of dismembering the Philippine territory as defined under the Constitution, thus create more worries of future Balkanization of the republic.

 

Under the Framework Agreement, the new Bangsamoro entity shall replace the existing Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which makes it almost similar to the previous Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) entered between the Arroyo government and the MILF. In other words, the provinces, cities, municipalities, barangays and geographic areas within the ARMM territory shall be the constituent units of the Bangsamoro. The Supreme Court has struck this latter agreement as unconstitutional although the main objection to Arroyo’s peace initiative was the secrecy and lack of transparency in how the agreement was made. This led to some speculations that Arroyo was simply paying back the MILF and her Muslim supporters for her re-election as president.

Proposed Bangsamoro Core Territory. Courtesy of Keith Bacongco,Mindanews Graphics.
Click link to view Speech of President Aquino on the preliminary peace agreement
between the government (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF),
http://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/13752-agreement-paves-way-for-enduring-peace-in-mindanao 

While the new Bangsamoro nation under the Framework Agreement shall have a ministerial form (parliamentary) of government, its relationship with the central government is asymmetric. This means that the relationship between the two levels of government is not equal. Or expressed mathematically, Bangsamoro can have a relation with Manila, but Manila cannot have the same relation to Bangsamoro.

 

Who is Bangsamoro? Under the Framework Agreement, “Those who at the time of conquest and colonization were considered natives or original inhabitants of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago and its adjacent islands including Palawan, and their descendants whether of mixed or of full blood shall have the right to identify themselves as Bangsamoro by ascription or self-ascription.”

 

The territorial breadth of the Bangsamoro entity and the definition of the Bangsamoro identity might fuel some form of controversy that would be difficult to untangle. Constitutional purists, for one, will naturally thumb down any scheme of dismembering the Philippine territory without going through the amendment process. They will view this as giving up territories which the country has earned from the time of independence from colonization.

 

This Constitution-based objection to the Bangsamoro territory, however, can be overcome by the new political modality between the new entity and the central government. Their relationship is asymmetric, which means that while Bangsamoro will be an autonomous entity, to the central government it is not an independent state. The distribution and sharing of powers confirm this type of relationship.

 

Under the Framework Agreement, the central government shall have reserved powers such as those bundled up and assigned to the national government like defence and external security, foreign policy, foreign trade unless those already devolved under the law to Bangsamoro, coinage and monetary policy, citizenship and naturalization and postal service.

 

On the other hand, Bangsamoro shall have exclusive powers like the establishment of the Sharia justice system for Muslim inhabitants. Other powers will be shared between the two levels of government.

 

In effect, there would be no diminution in central political powers. The central government is not diminished by devolution of some types of autonomy to the new Bangsamoro entity.

 

But the most contentious of all issues in the Framework Agreement is how the parties will agree to the sharing of the largely untapped wealth of Mindanao’s natural resources. Currently, ARMM has a 50 percent share in the proceeds of exploiting strategic minerals in the region. Under the new Bangsamoro entity, it will get a 75 percent share in wealth produced in the areas under its control, or 75 percent of revenues generated, leaving the central government a mere 25 percent. Under any percentage sharing scheme, disaster looms either way. It cannot also be discounted that the new Bangsamoro entity could just be dominated by the same set of local elites that will bend to the agenda of the ruling national elite and American multinational corporations which have economic interests to protect in Mindanao.

 

Arguably there is no need for a constitutional amendment to enshrine the new Bangsamoro entity as the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law could be considered part of enabling legislation in support of the constitutional provision for autonomous regions like the ARRM and the Cordilleras. Or on the other hand, the proposed Bangsamoro entity could just be a ruse to open up the Constitution in order to change its economic and patrimony provisions that would give equal rights to foreign companies to exploit our natural resources.

 

Congress, which has been overeager to convene a constituent assembly to amend the Constitution, and President Benigno Aquino III, who has been ambivalent to Charter Change, might have finally stumbled on the rationale for amending the Constitution. The Bangsamoro juridical entity as envisaged by the Framework Agreement might be the biggest casualty of the peace process.