By Manuel T. Cayon / Mindanao Bureau Chief
First of three parts
DAVAO CITY—On a social-networking site, peace worker Mary Ann Arnado posted a terse note to supporters: “To all BBL [Bangsamoro basic law] coalition steering committee members, please be reminded of the Senate hearing on the BBL tomorrow [Monday] at 9:30 a.m. with sultans as invited resource persons. There will be mass trooping inside the session hall and mass mob outside….”
The message is fraught with reminders and anxieties over perceived delay in moving the main governing law for Filipino Muslims in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao as the turn of approving, or disapproving it, shifts to the Senate after the House of Representatives approved on Wednesday last week the so-called Basic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region.
Arnado capped the terse message with “Let us all troop to the Senate and remind Sen. [Ferdinand] Marcos [Jr.] to catch up with the pacing at the House. Please wear white and invite your friends and colleagues to join us.”
The tone of the message was similar a week earlier, when longtime peace advocates like Oblates Fr. Eliseo Mercado, former president of the Notre Dame of Cotabato, posted on his social-media account to remind Mindanao residents that the House has begun the marathon hearing for BBL.
“The House Ad Hoc Committee voted on the proposed BBL. Query? Which have they voted, the consolidated proposed BBL—after all the public hearings and amendments—or the originally proposed BBL submitted by the OP [Office of the President] to Congress? People go on rooting for this or for that without knowing or reading which version is being voted on,” Mercado said.
On the other side of the political fence, politicians and organizations relay an array of optimism, from pompous claim of triumph it “was a leap forward” to guarded optimism that “the Moro Islamic Liberation Front [MILF] would accept it.”
The business organization in Cotabato City, the premier centuries-old trading center in the south and central part of
Mindanao, only have a stern warning to lawmakers against diluting or subverting the original content of the BBL—a likely flight of investment out of the region.
But, in many areas in Mindanao, people would keep asking on whether the BBL would really, and finally, pave the road to peace on the island, which has been the theater of a fierce and genocidal separatist war in the 1970s that has drained the country’s economy of almost P100 billion and claimed not less than 100,000 lives of soldiers and armed followers of the then-monolithic Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). The bigger casualty, however, was on civilians, both on the number of killed and displaced.
Uncertain
Immediately after the House passed the BBL at the committee level on Wednesday, politicians and government leaders harped on it as the better and constitutionally acceptable piece of legislation than the original version that was crafted by leaders of social and political sectors picked by both the government and the MILF.
Mindanao politicians, who were in the House committee that passed the BBL, like Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus B. Rodriguez, described it as a “historic vote,” although, a few months ago, he was speaking on the contrary on the BBL in obvious reaction to the deaths of 44 police commandos in a January 25 battle with MILF and renegade Moro guerrillas in the Maguindanao interior town of Mamasapano.
Other politicians also joined the fray against the BBL, with some senators vowing to thrash it after the Mamasapano incident unless the MILF would be able to demonstrate that it has officially shunned terrorism and show proof that it was not, and would, henceforth, reject the coddling and harboring of terrorists.
It was at this apparent suspended animation of what awaits the BBL in Congress that surprised many when the House committee went into a May 18 to 20 marathon hearing and, eventually, voted 50-17 in its favor. House leaders publicly acknowledged that they amended some of BBL articles and reconstructed the semantics to suit constitutional parameters, removing all words that may be insinuated as according sovereign government status to the Bangsamoro political entity.
The passage of the bill at the committee level last week surprised many. It was already scheduled in Malacañang timetable to be passed by the end of last year and to be submitted to a plebiscite in the first quarter this year. It was delayed, however, by various reasons.
Like they say, in many instances when new things and ideas are introduced, the birth pains commonly attend or forestall their coming and acceptance.
And, like the warning raised by businessmen in the ARMM against a dilution or diminution of the original intention of the framers of the basic law, early indications may not be promising, either.
In a dispatch by the Davao City-based online news outfit, MindaNews, Rep. Nancy Catamco of North Cotabato expressed her disappointment with the House-amended BBL, saying that other committee members rejected her 12 amendments “to the then-18-article, 242-section draft Bangsamoro basic law, focusing on indigenous peoples’ rights.”
She also belongs to the 75-member Ad Hoc Committee on the BBL and the rejection so upset her, she being a member of the Manobo-Tagabawa tribe in North Cotabato.
Catampo did not show up for the vote on the BBL on Wednesday afternoon, the MindaNews reported.
It would be a similar anxiousness, disdain and disenchantment expressed by communities and organizations that have been following closely the road travailed by the BBL in search for lasting peace in Mindanao.
To be continued
Image credits: AP/Bullit Marquez