By Manuel T. Cayon / Mindanao Bureau Chief
Second of three parts
DAVAO CITY—Gov. Mujiv Hataman, the chief executive of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), has offered no contest or disdain to the incoming Bangsamoro political entity that would soon replace the ARMM that he has apparently steered well as a Malacañang-appointed helmsman to this corruption and violence-laden region.
In the first 100 days of his caretakership of the ARMM, after the ruling Ampatuan clan were sent to prison for murder charges, he said the region saved P203.16 million, with P162 million of this coming after he “exorcised” ghost teachers and nonteaching staff, ghost buildings and other anomalous disbursements and transactions.
His caretaker administration was extended after his one-year tenure in 2012, and reports from his economic managers showed continued economic upswing for what was supposed to be a regional group of the country’s poorest provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur in south-central Mindanao, and the southwestern island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
P863 million early 2015 investments in ARMM
Early this year alone, the ARMM Regional Board of Investments reported an investment already reaching P863 million, which could bring this year closer to becoming the third year that the region breached the P1- billion level since the 2011 level of investments of P1.6 billion.
In 2013 investors poured in P1.4 billion, half of it (P700 million) from nickel exploration in Tawi-Tawi, in real estate in Bumbaran, Lanao del Sur (P365 million), and in the expansion of a banana plantation and an oil depot.
In between, the regional administration conducted several new professional moves, from paying the heavy indebtedness of the region to the Government Service Insurance System by P1 billion, to the first regional gathering of treasurers and finance officers for financial planning and management, to the conduct of cadastral surveys of 58 towns for purposes of benchmarking environmental data and the cleaning up of the list of agrarian-reform beneficiaries to set in motion the stalled land distribution to farmers.
Nonetheless, the improved government operation would be eventually handed down to the new Bangsamoro entity, including the ARMM’s fiscal autonomous agencies that some senators and congressmen were wary about giving total operational responsibility to the Bangsamoro.
‘We are almost there’
“We are almost there,” Hataman said in a statement released by the ARMM’s Bureau of Public Information after the Congress committee passed the BBL on Wednesday night. He hoped that the amendments notwithstanding,“will make for a better Bangsamoro basic law [BBL] that will entrench a genuinely autonomous region that is the best chance for peace and security in the south.”
He described the BBL as being “much debated and reviled by even those who have not read it,” but said it “is now closer to becoming a law by which we Moros will build the foundations of peace, security and progress.”
“It is a big leap forward,” he said, and urged the Senate to bring it down to the homestretch “in a race of hope, a race for peace.”
The BBL would provide the legal basis and governing matrix of the new Bangsamoro political entity, replacing the ARMM and covering a much bigger area to include, upon the decision of their local governments, the six municipalities of Lanao del Norte and the 39 barangays of North Cotabato.
The House of Representatives toned down the control of the Bangsamoro political entity of its “strategic resources” to only a consultation rather than the joint decision with the national government from the original BBL, one of the arguments some Congress representatives from the Makabayan bloc voted no to the BBL over its perception that it emasculated the Bangsamoro government instead of empowering it.
House panel lauded
While also reviled and accused as acting as spokesman for the MILF, government chief peace negotiator Prof. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer lauded the passage of the bill as a work of “due diligence [among House committee members] as they deliberated and voted on every section of the proposed measure, noting that substantive elements of the proposed law were retained in response to the call of the Bangsamoro people for genuine autonomy.”
Ferrer cited “three most substantive elements of the BBL [that] were carried in the amended draft of the ad hoc committee.”
“The important elements are still there, notably: the structure of government; automatic block grant; and the layered voting process where the majority vote in the six Lanao del Norte municipalities and 39 North Cotabato barangays shall be determined at the level of the local government unit.”
Coronel-Ferrer added that most articles, especially on fiscal and economic matters, were also preserved.
She said: “During the two-day proceedings, the ad hoc committee has entrenched certain substantial changes to the bill, such as the provision for the Chief Minister to have two deputies, one from the island provinces and another from central Mindanao; as well as the unequivocal recognition of the validity of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act in the Bangsamoro. The latter has allayed the anxiety of the Lumad communities who have been clamoring for the same.”
“The welfare of the indigenous peoples has been enhanced. The same is true with the protection of women’s rights and welfare. While there were cutbacks on the jurisdiction of the Bangsamoro government over natural resources, the wealth-sharing from the exploration, development, and utilization of these resources were not changed,” Ferrer said.
“We welcome the approval of the draft [BBL] in the House Ad Hoc Committee,” Gus Miclat, executive director of the Initiatives for International Dialogue, said.
“This shows that our legislators can do their due diligence in listening to all the crucial stakeholders and in ensuring the constitutionality of the [BBL] within the timetable they set.”
“We are certain that our good senators can do the same,” Miclat added. “They have already conducted their consultations and have listened to key resource persons. We are sure these will all be reflected in the committee report, which we hope will be finalized soon.”
To be continued