Two weeks ago, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced out of Yemen, after ruling the country for 33 years. A failed assassination attempt has seriously wounded President Saleh, who is now recuperating in a hospital in Riyadh.
Youthful protesters cheered upon learning of the dictator’s departure, hoping that this could lead to the third regime change triggered by the Arab Spring. Political pundits, on the other hand, are quick to point out that Saleh’s family remains influential in Yemen, and that the country remains locked in a power struggle.
Commentators coined the term “Arab Spring” to depict the wave of democratization happening in the Middle East. It first started in Tunisia, where escalating riots compelled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to leave the country. From there, the winds of change have spread to the rest of Middle East, fueling protests against its authoritarian rulers.
According to analysts, two factors drive the Arab Spring: demography and access to ICT. Sixty percent of the Middle East population is below 30 years old. The region’s youth, through access to various social media like the Internet and television channels abroad, have witnessed lives seemingly free from the oppression they see and experience at home. They started pushing for change through the same tools that opened their eyes to better possibilities. E-mail, chatrooms, web sites, etc., became avenues to air their voices, and to mobilize action.
But as the Middle East move forward toward democracy, the Philippines sadly took a step back. Last month the majority of our legislators voted for the postponement of elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The elections were scheduled this August, but were postponed, allegedly to follow a “constitutional mandate” to synchronize them with the national elections. Meantime, the President shall appoint officers in charge who would run the ARMM until the next national elections in May 2013.
This is foolhardy. It trumps an arguable interpretation of the Constitution over a right that our brothers and sisters in Mindanao fought for in the last three centuries. Even before the era of Spanish colonization, the Moro people have struggled to maintain a separate and distinct society. This continued even as the rest of the country fell under American rule. Postcolonial Philippines saw the Moro people resisting the uniform system of government imposed by the central government. We sought to put an end to this problem under the 1987 Constitution, where we recognized their autonomy and gave them a self-governing, representative government.
A crucial right integral to autonomy is the right to vote. Through Article X of the Constitution, and subsequent ARMM laws that put this mandate in force, we recognized the Moro people’s right to choose their own leaders. In postponing the ARMM elections, we are reneging on our solemn pledge of autonomy. To make things worse, we are operating on a false assumption that appointive officials can do a better job of reform than elective officials.
My fear is that with this postponement, we may have lost the opportunity to engage our Muslim youth in Mindanao in nation-building. Like their counterparts in the Middle East, our Muslim youth also long for meaningful change.
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